Some of my biggest childhood memories include listening to my mom’s favorite music, jamming on the 30-minute drive to school in the car. While some moms would put on the good old Disney channel or pretend to love the Backstreet Boys as much as their 1st grader, that wasn’t going to fly with my momma. Being naturally inquisitive, I would pester my mom from the backseat asking, “what’s this song talking about, mom?” or “what is he yelling, mom?” or much to the annoyance of my mother I would point out “he said a bad word” every time the F-bomb rolled on in a Nelly tune. Some parents may refuse or roll their eyes at my mom’s choice in car ride music; however, this lead to two positive aspects of jamming to explicit or parent advisory songs. First, I was definitely the coolest 7-year-old for knowing all of the popular rap songs that played at the middle school dances and second, my mom came up with clever interpretations and meanings for all my questions about the lyrics behind the song. Here are some age-appropriate interpretations of songs that preserved my innocence, thanks to my creative mom:

1. "Hollaback Girl" – Gwen Stafani

*Cue the shit is bananas B-A-N-A-N-A-S* Obviously this song not only taught me the importance of spelling my favorite fruit but also the phrase “it’s my shit, it’s my shit.” So little 7-year-old me, dancing along in the back of the car, has to announce to my family that “Gwen said a bad word!” My mother, however, had an inventive explanation for what Gwen actually said. “No, she is saying SHIP, Liv.. the SHIP is bananas! It’s because they are dancing on a ship in the music video, eating bananas!” Of course, I had to tell all my other young friends, and my teacher the news when she said the song wasn’t appropriate to dance to at recess. The realization of this lie didn’t happen until age 22 because I even partly believed that Gwen and her girl squad were dancing on the ship — until recently watching the music video. (Spoiler alert: no ship, just a yellow convertible)

2. "Iz U" – Nelly

This was one of my favorite Nelly songs my mom would blast during our 7 a.m. carpools. I remember picking up the cool 5th-grade neighbor who lived next door (yeah I got mad props from the 5th grader for my mom listening to Nelly) and him asking “Mrs. D, you really listen to this music this early in the morning?” I couldn’t help but wonder, however, what Nelly was talking about. What was a Lamborghini? Whose car was parked outside? I didn’t know, but I did tell my dad that my dream car was going to have a license plate that said “ I <3 Nelly”... after this my mom decided to cool it on the Nelly a bit.

3. "My Humps" – Black Eyed Peas

Okay so I know what you’re thinking, there is no way that this song could even pass for being age-appropriate, but you’re mistaken. “What you gonna do with all that junk inside your truck?” is merely a rhetorical question about a gentleman just a bit curious on why that girl has so many items (probably Target bags) inside her car’s trunk. She responds by just saying, she is going to get him love drunk. which doesn’t mean with tequila, but with her love. Problem solved, nothing bad to see here just a song about putting away the Target bags after a grocery run.

4. "Milkshakes" – Kelis

Obviously, this one is just about a girl that has a really good milkshake recipe that the boys in her neighborhood really love. She won’t give it out for free though, homegirl is “gonna have to charge." This song related to my 7-year-old lemonade stand days, pretty sure I had the best lemonade stands in all of my hometown, so obviously I understood exactly where my girl, Kelis was coming from with her milkshake stand. I never even had to question the meaning of the song, I mean come on, it’s pretty obvious what it’s about, until I decided that my 2nd-grade girl squad should come up to a dance for the Talent show to these innocent lyrics – yeah, I got shut down real quick by the music teacher.

5. "Wasn’t Me" – Shaggy

One of my favorite car ride memories was spitting out the Shaggy part of the song, while my sister accompanied me, belting out beautiful, melodic chorus. Sadly, there wasn't really a way for my mom to cop out of this one, (I mean "picture this they were both butt naked banging on the bathroom floor") so she just had to laugh, and teach a valuable life lesson “well, he shouldn’t have given her an extra key.”