How does Jay-Z’s Glory compare to other pop songs by new parents?

While rap’s biggest brand-name superstar would surely thrill at the prospect of winning that most stern of man-tests – just how soon after the birth did you get back to work? – the suspicion is that this was a keeper, recorded in advance alongside producer Pharrell Williams.

As such – and while there are some truly striking lyrical confessions in there – it’s all about the blue-eyed idyll of parenthood rather than the inevitably sobering reality. So it’s much easier to indulge Carter a sweet if alarmingly nouveau riche reverie like “two years old, shopping on Savile Row… hard to not spoil you rotten, looking like little me / the most beautifulest thing in the world, is Daddy’s little girl”, even if many among us know that three weeks later he’ll be trying to rhyme lines about bouncing on the spot, watching CBeebies for three hours straight and Beyoncé having send him out to Boots to buy nipple shields at 9am.

While Glory shares a gurgling guest appearance from the child in question with Stevie Wonder’s joyous Isn’t She Lovely (“life is Aisha,” sings Wonder of his newborn daughter on the latter, “the meaning of her name”), Carter has gone one step further and actually credited Blue on his own song under the pseudonym BIC, presumably in the hope the track will capture the public’s imagination as Wonder’s did and pay for her college education, trust fund and retirement through its royalties alone.

In truth, though, Glory is probably more an I Just Called to Say I Loved You, which might not harm the 21-year-old Blue’s bank balance but she’ll probably ask Dad to leave a recital of it out of his father of the bride speech.

The history of pop singers paying tribute to their children in song is long and littered with familiar tracks, but one rule tends to hold true – the songs in question will be saccharine, radio-friendly and only barely remarkable on their own terms, but almost entirely heart-breaking when placed in context.

Glory itself is a case in point, its lazily rocking beat and Carter’s cooing delivery hiding moments of real import.

“Your grandpop died of liver failure,” he muses touchingly of his own father, “deep down he was a good man / goddamn I can’t deliver failure.” Later, the revelation that Knowles has previously miscarried and that the couple feared the same fate for this child is strikingly emotive.

Rather than a song to be adopted at christenings of people Carter and Knowles will never meet, this song has more the quality of a time capsule for just one little girl to open when she’s old enough to understand its message.

The history of songs for artists’ children is littered with such emotional time bombs. Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven, for example, a mawkish ballad by any stretch of the imagination, comes startlingly into its own when you remember it was written about the accidental death of Clapton’s four-year-old son Conor. A parent wouldn’t have to be half-crazed with sleep deprivation to be in floods of tears upon hearing “would you hold my hand if I saw you in heaven?” with that in mind.

Similarly, with John Lennon’s 1980 song Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), the zenith of father-to-son songs in honour of his second child Sean, born in 1975. Can your eyes stay dry when you hear the words “I can hardly wait to see you come of age / but I guess we’ll both just have to be patient” and remember what happened to John at the end of that year?

To be honest you don’t have to look far to find platitudes either, but then we can make allowances for the brain-softening effect of new parenthood. Take Bob Dylan’s lyrically vague, musically charming Forever Young, or Rod Stewart’s jaunty but inferior track of the same name.

Kate Bush’s Bertie floats by in a haze of satisfied fulfilment, while Frank Sinatra croons Nancy (With the Laughing Face) with the punch-drunk air of a man who’s just woken from late night nappy duty (and who thought a line like “picture a tomboy in lace” was the right image to go for).

In each case unashamed sentiment apparently becomes entirely acceptable when parents start writing about their children, and Carter may want to take note that a few of those careers above moved away from credibility and towards comfortable freewheeling when this happened.

If he wants Blue Ivy to surprise him, though, he might want to make bold statements about her next time he writes a song in her honour, which will inevitably raise a chuckle whenever anyone remembers who it’s about. In that regard, Loudon Wainwright’s Rufus is a Tit Man remains in a genre of one to this day.