It’s a Pirate’s Life for Me

Listen to melody + accompaniment for It's a Pirate's Life for Me as you follow along with the lyrics.

Stream or Purchase from many streaming sites including: Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer.

The Blue Skies and Pirates  CD (Donna & Andy performance and instrumental) tracks (24) are available as download or physical CD on this website.

Introducing the song

Read the lyrics aloud.
Discuss any unfamiliar words.
Have a discussion

• Do students think it would be fun to be a pirate with a talking parrot and the ability to sail a ship wherever they want to go?
• Has anyone ever seen or heard a talking parrot?

Lyric options

Two options for lyrics are provided for line two of verse three.
Decide if you want to sing about a pirate with a sword, or if you prefer to have the pirate sleeping.
The teacher may make this decision before introducing the song, and two separate lyric sheets are provided to accommodate this lyric choice. It is also an option to have the students vote on their preference.

Performance suggestions

Add simple props – striped shirts, bandanas, toy parrots and fake tattoos (An eyeliner is a great tool for creating temporary tattoos).

Include special pirate “soloists” to present the spoken response, “To the sea!” Invite soloists to give different interpretations of the “to the sea!” response.

• Loud / soft
• High pitched/ low pitched
• Changing their natural voice to sound more gruff, or silly, or…..

Small group classes, elementary music classroom singers or choirs may be divided into small solo groups to sing the verses as small solo sections. This helps lighten lyric memorization demands for younger singers.

Home schoolers

Create a ship by organizing a group of chairs, turning a table upside down, or using a cardboard box.

Pretend to be pirates as you listen to the song and sing along.

Have fun!

Some songs seem to “arrive” without much fuss. This is one of those songs. I don’t remember what sparked my imagination and got me started writing, but it was a simple process to include all the clichés associated with pirates as I wrote lyrics for the verses. It is great fun to include participatory bits in a song that I know the students will love to sing. The exuberant call, “To the sea!” is that kind of fun element that draws kids into the singing experience. Often the songs I write reflect the fact that I am the mother of three energetic boys. If I could write lyrics and keep my own three livewires interested, it was a good indication of how it would go for the general child population that eventually sings my songs.

The recording process for this song was also a blast. Our Donna & Andy recordings have all been recorded using the talents of the best musicians we can find. It’s a Pirate’s Life for Me was recorded for the CD: Bue Skies and Pirates, with lots of blues and jazz influenced tunes. The “heavyweights” we hired to record our tracks were high-end, well-known jazz musicians and musical monsters who are able to play with incredible skill. We took courage in hand and requested each of these highly respected musicians to add a spoken response, “to the sea!” to include on this track. At first, we thought nobody would agree, but as each musician contributed their pirate interpretation, their inner child became very evident. As the voices started accumulating, efforts were made to stand out in the group of voices. they tried to be louder, they laughed at each other, they asked to re-do their part if they thought they could do a better take. They were silly, they were earnest and they had fun!

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Send us your performance video - perhaps we might post it on this page!