We never celebrated Mother’s Day in our house, probably because our mother didn’t like it. Come to think of it, she didn’t actually like being a mother. I’ve had a different reason for not liking Mother’s Day: the terrible music associated with it. Mama by the Spice Girls is one of the most horrific pop smashes of all time, while Irish goodie-goodie Daniel O’Donnell owes his career to the kind of sickly sentiment Mothering Sunday inspires. He even holds an annual “tea party” for his fans at his mum’s house in Donegal. Motherhood, however, is a far more multifaceted role than O’Donnell and the Spice Girls credited it as being, so here are a handful of songs that make up a rather more interesting soundtrack to Mother’s Day.
Click here to go to Spotify to listen to the tracks below - and to add the mother-themed songs you think we missed
Mama Said by the Shirelles (1961)
This chirpy, appealingly innocent smash hit by the New Jersey girl group places real value on the wisdom a mother has for her teenage daughter. “Mama said there’ll be days like this,” sings Shirley Owens, before telling the story of falling in love with a boy and realising he couldn’t care less about her. Only Mama can make a girl feel better when she’s feeling this way: “Then she said, someone will look at me like I’m looking at you one day,” Owens concludes, wiping away the tears as she realises how much her mother loves her.
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Mother by John Lennon (1970)
The mother of all mother issues is laid bare on John Lennon’s brutal confessional, in which he opens up on feelings of abandonment in stark terms. “Mother, you had me, but I never had you,” he sings, before ending the song in howls of anguish. Lennon’s mother Julia, who died in 1958 when she was hit by a car, took a hands-off approach to parenting, farming out her son to his Aunt Mimi. Lennon underwent primal scream therapy with Arthur Janov in 1970, leading to the writing of this emotionally bare classic.
Mother by Pink Floyd (1979)
While John Lennon complained about his mother not being there for him, Roger Waters complained that his mother was there far too much. In this song from his 1979 psychodrama The Wall, a mother’s over-protectiveness leaves her son with a chronic inability to cope. There certainly isn’t much maternal comfort in a line like “Mama’s going to make all your nightmares come true,” bringing disturbing visions of an enormous pair of bosoms squashing Waters’ terrified face into oblivion. It’s a thankless task, being the mother of an ungrateful rock star.
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Take Your Mama by Scissor Sisters (2004)
The cliché goes that a gay man will never have a better friend than his mum, which New York’s Scissor Sisters celebrated on this glorious ode to coming out. In a song that has surely helped gay teenagers across the world come to terms with who they are, singer Jake Shears tells of his plan to take a friend’s mother to a gay bar, ply her with cheap champagne, and let her draw her own conclusions about the direction her son is heading. The fact that the song sounds like a lost classic by Elton John or Queen should clear up any doubts this woman might be having about her son’s leanings.
Hey Mama by Kanye West (2005)
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Rapper Kanye West’s ego can get the better of him, but this simple expression of love and gratitude from his 2005 album Late Registration is sincere and selfless. Hey Mama is an appreciation of all the things West’s mother has done for him, from making him chicken soup when he was a little boy with a cold to supporting his decision to be a rapper even while urging him to study for a doctorate. “Since you brought me into this world, let me take you out to a restaurant, upper echelon,” he offers. West’s mother died two years after the song was released, just as his career went into the stratosphere.
The Cruel Mother, trad, collected by Francis Child in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882-1898)
The English tradition is filled with ballads about murderous and violent mothers. This one tells of a woman who stabs her two babies to death in the woods, only to see their ghosts later, dressed in white, who tell her that she’s going to Hell. First published as a broadside in the 1690s, the ballad has since been recorded by everyone from English folk queen Shirley Collins to clean-cut duo Ian & Sylvia.
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Mother’s Little Helper by the Rolling Stones (1966)
Trust the Stones, never the kindest of bands, to twist the knife where it hurts on this song about the humdrum despair of the average housewife. “What a drag it is getting old,” begins Mick Jagger with the casual cruelty of youth, before telling the story of a mother struggling to cope and turning to tranquillisers to ease her through the busy day. “Kids are different today, I hear every mother say,” sings Jagger, sounding like he’s leaning on the fence of a suburban lawn, watching another housewife pop a “little yellow pill” behind the net curtains.
I’m Leaving Here Tomorrow, Mama by Billy Vera (1968)
This country-tinged lament must be the saddest mother’s day song of all time. It takes the form of a letter to a mother from her son, who is in jail. After apologising for causing her so much sorrow and shame, he tells her that he can’t wait to see her at the front gates the following day, when he’ll finally be released from jail. It’s only at the end of the song that its real meaning becomes apparent. He is about to be reunited with his mother — in Heaven. He’s on his way to the electric chair.
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Mother and Child Reunion by Paul Simon (1972)
It was the death of a much-loved family dog that inspired Simon to write this reggae-backed tune about loss, even though the lyrics suggest that it’s a message from a mother that has lost her child, or vice versa. The title, incidentally, came from the name used for chicken and egg soup in a Chinese restaurant Simon visited in New York.
Harper Valley PTA by Jeannie C. Reilly (1968)
Finally, here’s a great song about a cool mum that is not mawkish, murderous or filled with psychological issues. A parent-teachers’ association sends a letter to the widowed mother of a teenage girl to say that she wears her skirts too short, she’s staying out too late, and she’s setting a bad example to her daughter in general. So she marches in to their meeting and exposes them for the bunch of adulterous, drunken hypocrites they are. Who couldn’t love a mother for socking it to a PTA meeting like that?