Dear Libby,

Frozen 2 was probably one of the biggest movies last year, and it deserved to be. It was fantastic. We bought the soundtrack on iTunes so the kids could listen to it without having to fast-forward through the movie every time they wanted to hear one of the songs. It seemed like a good idea at the time…but then the lockdown happened.

My wife’s an essential worker (she’s a nurse at St. Benedict’s), while I work in HR at Jorus Tech. That means I’ve been stuck at home with the kids while she’s busy working herself ragged and putting her life in danger to give other people a fighting chance to survive this mess. I envy her so much. She doesn’t know how easy she has it.

From the moment my kids wake up to well after they fall asleep with the music playing, all I hear on an endless rotation is the Frozen 2 soundtrack. Again, the music is spectacular, just like the movie. My issue isn’t with the music itself. All those songs are great to listen to at a reasonable rate of replay. But my kids are hitting like 30 replays a day. That’s 30 replays of THE ENTIRE SOUNDTRACK!!!!!!

I’m not exaggerating for dramatic effect, either. I’ve counted them. My kids are usually awake about 16 hours during the day, and the Frozen 2 soundtrack is 31 minutes and 18 seconds long. You can do the math yourself if you don’t believe me. It’s driving me completely insane. I can’t even hear myself think. I’m falling behind on work. Somehow, despite everyone working from home right now, I still have mountains of paperwork.

If I want to have a job to go back to when the lockdown ends, I need to find a way to get my kids to stop listening to the Frozen 2 soundtrack on repeat. I tried banning them from listening to it for at least a couple of days, but they complained to their mom and she read me the riot act. Apparently listening to Elsa and Anna and Olaf and Kristoff and Sven belt the same 8 tunes over and over is them expressing themselves, and we can’t stifle that or they might grow up to be a serial killer or a TikTok influencer or something horrible like that.

The first time they listened to the soundtrack, I thought that once they finished “The Next Right Thing,” it was over. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the alternate versions of “Into the Unknown,” “All is Found,” and “Lost in the Woods” included at the end. I love Weezer and Panic! at the Disco, and while Kacey Musgraves isn’t really my kind of music, she has an incredible voice. It was only after my kids began playing the soundtrack again that I was struck with the chilling realization that by the time their second playthrough ended, I would have listened to those particular songs 4 TIMES EACH!

Now those alternate versions are the bane of my existence. The end of the film’s songs 8 songs isn’t the end of the torture. What’s worse, I’ve had to endure the violation of having the mere sound some of my favorite musicians’ voices become anathema to me (you can thank blink-182 for me knowing that word. For the longest time, I thought the ninth track on their self-titled album was called “Anathema.” I think “Asthenia” somehow melded with “Anthem” and Enema of the State to complete the transformation. When I realized my mistake, I had to look “anathema” up to see if it was even a real word).

How can I get my kids to stop listening to the Frozen 2 soundtrack on repeat without making them feel like I’m trying to force them to stop? You’re probably already sick of me saying “Frozen 2 soundtrack” so many times. Now multiply that by 1000000% and you’ll start to come close to understanding my pain.

Oh, and before you give me some smart aleck reply like “just get earplugs,” I can’t just shut the noise out since me and my wife just had a baby about 4 months before the pandemic started. Awesome timing, right? I can’t even claim the music is bothering her, because she bops along with the music, too. I also can’t get them headphones or earbuds because my son has sensory issues with stuff around his ears.

My older daughter is hard of hearing, which means I can’t even ask them to at least keep the volume down. We live in a pretty cramped apartment, since our plans on getting a house after the baby was born have been put on hold. I can hear the music no matter where they are in the apartment. I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know how much longer I can take it. Please help me.

–In Need of Something Elsa to Listen To

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Dear “In Need of Something Elsa to Listen To,”

I can sympathize with your pain. My ex-husband had a habit of getting stuck on a couple of songs and just listening to them over and over all day long. He wasn’t quite as bad as your kids, but nobody is. If you’re not exaggerating or outright lying, they’re listening to the aforenamed soundtrack 210 times per week. That’s 840 times each month. But you’re a hell in your own making, my friend.

I’m not even a parent and I know the rule that you never buy your kids the soundtrack to a Disney movie they love. Kids are astonishingly resilient when it comes to withstanding the kinds of psychological torture techniques that even the most hardened criminals would crumble against.

At this point, I don’t really know what else you can do. If you can’t block the music out, they can’t listen to it quietly, there’s nowhere in your apartment where you won’t hear the songs, and you can’t ask them to stop, there’s not really any other options I can think of. You might be spit out of luck. You could try introducing them to a new movie with a soundtrack you don’t hate, but that’s really only a temporary solution. If they start listening to it as much as they do with the soundtrack for the sequel to that loose film adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” you’re really just trading one tormentor for another.

The best advice I can give is to just get really stinkin’ drunk. You’ll probably get fired, but at this point, money is an enabler. If you didn’t have any, you never would’ve been able to afford to get your kids that soundtrack. Your wife might divorce you over it, which would be a shame, but look at it this way: you’ll only have to listen to the La Reine des neiges II soundtrack 420 times a month from now on.

–Lovingly, Libby