As a musician, Farideh (who only uses her first name professionally) never considered writing about motherhood because it wasn't considered "cool" to sing songs about being a mom.
But when Farideh joined a comedy class to expand her skills last year, a classmate asked her to share the most annoying thing about motherhood — and she had an answer at the ready.
"The most annoying part is when everybody approaches your husband and is like, 'Oh my God, he's just such an amazing father,'" Farideh tells TODAY.com. "He's literally pushing a stroller. He's not doing anything amazing. He's just being out in public with his child. And then I took the idea to write about all the things I do to zero acknowledgments and how my husband is praised just for existing in the presence of our child."
That's how her viral song, "You Are Such a Good Dad," was born.
In the catchy tune, she makes an incredibly long list of all the invisible and unacknowledged labor she does each day to keep the household running. But strangers and relatives keep praising her husband for doing the bare minimum by saying, you guessed it, "You are such a good dad."
Since Farideh first posted the video for the song online in December 2022, she's received a lot of comments — both positive and negative — but she's not worried about critics who think she's bashing all fathers or that her husband "isn't one of the good guys."
She's careful to clarify that the song is "really about how society treats my partner, not about how my partner is engaging in the workload."
Farideh discovered that to write a musical comedy song, she needed to build a new muscle. Rather than writing "from the heart," as she had done previously with the Canadian folk-pop trio Rosie and the Riveters, she had to get more "cerebral" and think about all the things women may be annoyed about that they aren't saying out loud.
"The conversations I've had with my friends have revolved around things like infidelity, or incontinence, or just general division of labor issues, how they feel about their body ... and so then I write about those things," she says.
Not all of the lyrics are about Farideh's own personal experiences. If she's creatively stuck, she asks her Instagram followers for suggestions, which is like "songwriting with 100,000 people."
These conversations have led Farideh to take her job of "helping women feel seen" very seriously.
She shares her thoughts candidly with her audience, telling them that she couldn't write about her home life if her marriage wasn't in a "great place." But there were some ups and downs along the way.
That first year of your baby's life is "so hard because not only does your baby have all these needs, but your marriage has all these needs because you're both exhausted and drowning," she says.
Luckily, Farideh's husband has been thrilled to go along for the ride. He even stars in one of her "You are Such a Good Dad" videos, frolicking in the fall leaves while she does the housework.
Farideh has so enjoyed giving motherhood a musical twist that she just released an album called "The Mother Load."
"It explores all the things that mothers carry," says Farideh.
I think sometimes the more I try to be the perfect mom, the worse of a mom I become because I become more controlling,"
Farideh
She has songs about laundry, family road trips, bad parenting advice and more. She wants women to know that they can be good moms, even if they're not perfect moms.
"There's just this endless, endless standard that we're trying to meet and I think sometimes the more I try to be the perfect mom, the worse of a mom I become because I become more controlling," says Farideh.
"Sometimes by lowering the standards, I'm actually a better mother."
