agonyaunt | Dan Kois guest-hosting Prudie.

Dear Prudence,

My apartment walls and floors are super thin, meaning I can hear when my downstairs neighbor sings to his baby, especially at night. There’s one song he sings often that’s very beautiful, and I’d love to know what it’s called so I can learn it myself. But it’s in a different language, and I can’t make out enough distinct sounds to even attempt Googling it. I don’t want him to feel embarrassed by the fact that I can hear him, and I’m worried that asking what the song is called would accidentally sound passive aggressive, like I was telling him to keep it down or dropping hints that I’m annoyed by noise through the walls. I don’t know him beyond having said hi a few times at the mailboxes, so I have no way to know for sure how he’d take it.

Am I overthinking this? Is there a nonawkward way to say, “Hey, sometimes I hear that song you sing to your baby and I think it’s beautiful. What’s it called?”

—Probably Overthinking

***

I don’t think you’re overthinking! Parents of new babies who live in thin-walled apartments are hyperconscious of the noise they’re making in the chaotic natural disasters that are their new lives. So if you just sauntered up to this guy you barely know and asked about the song, I can personally guarantee you’ll never hear the song again.

But great news, there’s an easy way to ascertain this information: Become his friend! Talk to him about other things, invite him and his baby over, go with them on walks, maybe even offer to babysit. (HE SURE NEEDS HELP, I BET.) An enduring friendship is a terrific way to find things out about people. Eventually, he’ll sing the song in your presence, and then you can ask what it is, and then you’ll know—and by then you’ll find there are so many other benefits to friendship that I bet you continue hanging out.

—Prudie, neighboringly

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i'm not super comfortable with this answer. there's nothing wrong with making friends with a neighbor, of course, but LW didn't make a single peep about wanting that, so the recommended action feels out of proportion with the goal.

even if they do make friends, i see no reason to assume "Eventually, he’ll sing the song in your presence." people have very different feelings about singing. plenty of people sing to their babies and would not want to sing to or in front of friends.

backing up from the outsize make-friends advice, back to the simpler goal of learning what the song is -- don't tell him you can hear him! you might hinder his feeling free to sing to his baby at all. you don't need to know the song, you just want to; to me, that doesn't outweigh the possibility that letting on you can hear him -- and are actively listening! -- will make him uneasy. there's no walking that back. [sub]prudie says that if LW asks outright, "I can personally guarantee you’ll never hear the song again," but he doesn't acknowledge that asking outright risks making daily life a little less easygoing for the singing dad. it might not, but it risks it.

I agree that cultiavting a friendship on the offchance of hearing a song is out of proportion, but otoh, it's possible that cultivating a friendly acquaintanceship with the neighbor would lead to a level of comfort where you could ask. Not particularly likely perhaps, but not impossible. If you have a couple of friendly exchanges with the guy and he seems shy or nervous or just... normal levels of having shame about stuff you can still drop the idea and you can always at least learn what his native language is through those interactions. It's never bad to have that amount of familiarity with a neighbor, anyway, so it's not like it's wasted or whatever.

Exactly, cultivating a more friendly relationship is no bad thing, but it would be weird to do it only to find out what a song is, and not worth doing if you're not motivated by anything other than "that song is cool".

As a parent of two babies that cried A Lot At Times, there is no way I would not have interpreted "what are you singing?" as "you and your babies are Too Loud". Sorry LW, there is no way of asking that at this point.

I think you're right here - it didn't occur to me because I tend to think that "be friends with your neighbors" is always good advice (I'm bad at following it, mind you, but it's still good advice for a ton of reasons.)

And there are times when it's neighborly in general to let your neighbors know that you can hear more than they might wish, but when they are dealing with a tiny baby is not one of them.

Probably the best thing to do in terms if you really need the song name is to build a friednly acquaintance with the family, wait until the baby is, I dunno, five or six, old enough that crying baby is no longer big on their worries, and then reminisce with the neighbor and the kid about the days when they were a baby. I mean at that point you probably won't remember the song anyway, you absolutely not cultivate a years-long friendship just to learn the name of a song ~~there's an mdzs fanfic prompt for free for anyone who wants it~~ but if it comes up as part of your friendship it'd be a nice story for the kid to hear too.

(The other option is that it's reasonably likely if you do start chatting with him in general, at some point he will apologize for the crying anyway, at which point you can say no, no, I don't mind the noise, I know what babies are like, and I love your singing.)

Edited 2021-05-20 16:33 (UTC)

it turns out there was a followup later in the chat, that i hadn't seen when i posted my comment. (i'm sorry -- i forgot it was a chat and ongoing).

Q. Re: Probably overthinking: You’re overthinking it—just say this the next time you see your neighbor: “Hey, so sorry if this sounds like I’m complaining about noise, but I sometimes overhear the lovely song you sing to your baby. Would you mind telling me what it is so I can learn it?”

I’d be very surprised if he took that the wrong way. I’ve actually had something like this happen! I live in a really old building, and it’s just not soundproofed, but I overheard my neighbor upstairs listening to a concert so just asked him what it was (and prefaced it with the “please don’t think I’m complaining”).

A: If someone had said that to me when I had an infant in a teensy New York apartment, I would have dropped dead with shame. If you must know the song title now, Shazam it.

to the writer-inner, i'd say: asking a neighbor what concert they're listening to is quite different from asking what they are singing.