Episode 077 - Top 10 Mother's Day Songs

Just in time for Mother's Day, I'm celebrating my favorite rock and roll songs about Mothers! 

I’ll be honest — this list was harder to build than I expected. Rock has plenty of songs that use the word “mama,” but not nearly as many that are actually about mothers. Some are loving tributes. Some are complicated memories. Some are dark psychological portraits. And a few are just flat-out fun rock-n-roll songs with a mother somewhere near the center of the story.

Whether the song is about wisdom, loss, rebellion, regret, sacrifice, or the voice of a mother that stays with you long after childhood, these are the rock songs that made my Mother’s Day playlist, and it's all right here, this week on the Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast!

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Transcript

Speaker 2 0:00

Welcome to the Rock'N' Roll Show podcast. I'm your host Alex Gadd, and this week I've got another top 10 list for you. Last year, I did a Father's Day top 10, and someone messaged me asking if I was gonna do a Mother's Day list this year. With Mother's Day coming up this weekend, I spent some serious time preparing a list of my favorite rock'n' roll songs about mothers. So I hope you'll join me to celebrate all those mothers, stepmothers, and mothers-in-law out there coming up right now. When I did the Father's Day top 10 list last year, I actually said in the podcast,"Rock'n' roll is full of songs about mothers." But as I prepared this episode, I found out that wasn't actually true. There are way more songs about fathers than mothers, and for the reasons I shared at the time last year. Lots of rock stars had issues with their fathers, which gave them plenty of fertile ground for songwriting. Most of those songs were unhappy ones, so that list was hard to compile, but I thought it came out pretty well, and judging by the number of you who reached out to me personally, apparently you thought so, too. Now, songs about mothers were even harder to find, and I was surprised by that. What became clear is that many songs using the word mama or mother are not actually about the singer's mother. Genesis, Ozzy Osbourne, and others use mama in a very different way, and when rock songs are actually about mothers, they're often not positive like with fathers. Mothers in rock songs tend to be overbearing or absent or powerless, or some combination of those three, and the singer, usually a man, is angry, wounded, or screwed up because of it. Other songs about mothers are really about other people's mothers, often sung as a warning, like Willie Nelson's Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys, Or Danzig's haunting song called"Mother." In fact, there are four rock songs that I found titled"Mother", and I considered all of them, but none of them are cheerful or upbeat or positive. I only picked one of those songs because I didn't want this list to get too morose or depressing. Thankfully, I did find some songs about loving relationships between a mother and her child, though most of those are sung from the perspective of a child remembering a mother who's no longer with them. I count James Hetfield, Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins, Paul McCartney, and John Lennon also wrote a song that was more positive in that mode. I also wanted at least one song sung by a woman who is a mother, and I'm happy to include one of those today. All that's to say there were not a ton of songs to choose from, but I chose the ones that I like best and tried to mix it up between upbeat songs and sadder ones, so let's get into it. Starting off at number ten is"Julia" by The Beatles. While the song was credited to Lennon-McCartney and was released on The Beatles' White Album, John was the only Beatle to perform on the recording and wrote the song by himself. The story goes that while The Beatles were in India with the Maharishi, John asked Donovan, who was there with them, to show him how to finger pick the way that Donovan did, more a folk music kinda picking. He then wrote this song about his mother, Julia, who had died while he was only a teenager, almost like it was a children's song. and that childlike quality is what makes Julia so devastating. Lennon doesn't write it like a grand tribute or a dramatic confession. He sings it softly, almost like he's trying not to wake anyone up. The guitar is delicate, the vocal is close and unguarded, and the whole thing feels less like a performance than like a memory he's finally allowed himself to examine and relive. Julia Lennon wasn't just a symbolic figure in John's life, she was the mother he lost too early after an already complicated childhood, and you can hear that heartache in the way he reaches for her without ever fully bringing her back. That's why Julia belongs on this list, sitting quietly in number ten. It isn't the loudest mother song or the most obvious one- Or the one built for a big emotional climax. It's more fragile than that. It's a grown man singing to the mother he still needed using childlike language because anything more sophisticated might have broken that spell. On an album full of wild turns and strange experiments, some of the Beatles' heaviest moments included, Julia stops everything for two minutes and lets John Lennon be a son again.

Speaker 4:38

Half of what I say is meaningless. But I say it just to reach you, Julia. Julia, Julia, ocean child calls me. So I sing the song of love, Julia. Julia, seashell eyes, windy smile calls me. So I sing the song of love, Julia. Her hair a floating sky is shimmering, glimmering in the sun. Julia, Julia, morning moon touch me. So I sing the song of love, Julia

Speaker 2 6:21

Song nine is Metallica's Mama Said. This gives us a very different vision of Metallica than most casual fans expect. It's not the sound of Master of Puppets or even Enter Sandman. It's James Hetfield stepping away from the thrash metal and writing something closer to a country rock confessional song. It's built around a son leaving home, chasing his own road, and slowly realizing that the distance between independence and regret can get pretty thin. What makes Mama Said so impactful to me is the real-life weight behind it. Hetfield's mother died when he was still a teenager, like John Lennon's, and so much of his writing is dealt with loss, anger, and the scars left by that part of his life. But here, instead of turning pain into rage, it feels like he's just using it as a reflection. The mother in the song is not physically present, but her voice is everywhere. She warned him, she loved him, and she knew that he would have to find his own way anyway. That gives the song its ache. It's not just about missing your mom, it's about understanding her, but too late. That's why I included Mama Said in this list. It may not be the most familiar mother song in rock and roll, and it's certainly not a traditional Metallica song. But that's part of what makes it interesting. It shows a band known for volume and aggression finding power instead in restraint. At its core, this is a song about the complicated emotional math between a mother and a son, the need to leave, the desire to be free, and the painful realization later that some of the wisdom you resisted was right all along, which I know applies to my younger self, and I bet it applies to some of you as well.

Speaker 3 7:55

Mama, she has taught me well. Told me when I was young,"Son, your life's an open book. Don't close it'fore it's done.""The brightest flame burns quickest," that's what I heard her say. A son's heart's owed to mother, but I must find my way. Let my heart go. Let your son grow. Mama, let my heart go or let this heart be still. Be still. Rebel, my new last name. Wild blood in my veins. Apron strings around my neck. The mark that still remains. Left home at an early age. All I heard was wrong. I never asked forgiveness. But what is said is done. Let my heart go. Let your son grow.

Speaker 4 9:45

Mama, let my heart go or let this heart be still. Never I ask of you, but never I gave. But you gave me your emptiness I now take to my grave. Never I ask of you, but never I gave. But you gave me your emptiness I now take to my grave. So let this heart be

Speaker 3 10:34

still. Mama, now I'm coming home. I'm not all you wished me to be. His love for her son spoken, help me be. Yeah, I took your love for granted. Another thing you said to me. Yeah, I need your arms to hold me. But it don't show what's all I see.

Alex Gadd 11:07

Coming in at number eight is Loggins and Messina with"Your Mama Don't Dance." When I first started compiling this list, I dismissed this song almost as a novelty song. But when I looked into it a little deeper, I found out it was inspired by Jim Messina's mother, who loved early rock and roll music, but then married a man who thought rock and roll was made by long-haired weirdos and was inappropriate for adults to listen to. So his mama literally could no longer dance because his stepdad didn't like rock and roll. And while that was the impetus for the title, the song itself became a kind of fun song built around that lyric. That backstory gives the song more weight than I expected it would've. On the surface,"Your Mama Don't Dance" is a loose good time rock and roll number, short, catchy, and built around a great hook. But underneath that playful chorus is a real idea that music changes the emotional temperature of a family. One person hears rock and roll as freedom, joy, and release. Another hears it as rebellion, noise, and even trouble. And caught in the middle is this mother who wants to dance but has to live with someone who sees things differently. It's not a sentimental mother song, and I don't think it's trying to be. It captures a different version of motherhood in rock music. The mother is a real person, not just as a symbol or as an icon. This mother had her own relationship with the music before somebody else decided it wasn't respectable. And of course, the beauty of the record is that none of that bogs it down. Loggins and Messina turn it into more of a party. It's not the deepest song on the list, but it is a memorable one, a fun reminder that sometimes the mother in a rock song isn't crying, praying, or giving advice. Sometimes she just wants to dance.

12:50

Your mama don't dance and your daddy don't Rock-N-Roll. Your mama don't dance and your daddy don't Rock-N-Roll. Well, evening rolls around and it's time to go to town where you roll. Rock-N-Roll. See, your old folks say that you're gonna end up dead by ten. When you're out on a date and you bring an older dame home instead of. Trust me, don't you do it, you'll lose more than you can ever win. It's gonna end, it's gonna end. Your mama don't dance and your daddy don't Rock-N-Roll. Your mama don't dance and your daddy don't Rock-N-Roll. Well, evening rolls around and

Alex Gadd 13:54

Mother's Day song seven is"The Mother" by Brandi Carlile. As I said earlier, this is the best example I could find of a mother singing a song about being a mother. Most rock songs about mothers look at motherhood from the outside, a child missing their mother or blaming their mother for the way she raised them, but Brandi Carlile writes this one from the inside looking out. She isn't mythologizing motherhood. She's living it, and she's honest enough to tell you that it requires sacrifice. The song is about her daughter, Evangeline, and what makes it so powerful is that Carlile doesn't pretend motherhood is all soft lighting and greeting card wisdom. She sings about losing parts of her old life, the freedom, the selfishness, the ability to belong completely to herself. But she doesn't frame that loss as tragedy. She frames it as transformation. That's the magic of the song. It admits the cost of motherhood while making it clear that the love at the center is bigger than whatever was given up. That's why I chose The Mother in this spot. It's not the loudest song on this list, and it's not built on big rock'n' roll swagger, but emotionally it hit me hard because it understands motherhood is complicated, beautiful, exhausting, and permanent. Brandi Carlile gives us the mother not as a memory, not as a symbol, and not as the person waiting at home, but as someone sharing the experience from inside the role itself, something a lot of her fans can relate to, and some might even benefit from hearing more about.

15:18

Welcome to the end of being alone inside your mind. You're tethered to another, and you worry all the time. You always knew the melody, but you never heard it rhyme. She's fair and she is quiet, Lord. She doesn't look like me. She made me love the morning. She's a holiday at sea. The New York streets are as busy as they always used to be. But I am the mother of Evangeline. The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep. She broke a thousand heirlooms I was never meant to keep. She filled my life with color, canceled plans, and trashed my car. But none of that was ever who we are. Outside of my windows are the mountains and the snow. I hold you while you're sleeping, and I wish that I could go. All my rowdy friends are out accomplishing their dreams. But I am the mother of Evangeline. They still got their morning paper and their coffee and their time. And they still enjoy their evenings with the skeptics and the wine. Oh, but all the wonders I have seen, I will see a second time from inside of the ages through your eyes. And you are not some accident where no one voted through. The world that stood against us made us mean to fight for you. And when we chose your name, we knew that you'd fight the power, too. You're nothing short of magical and beautiful to me. I'll never hit the big time without you. So they can keep their treasure and their ties to the machine.'Cause I am the mother of Evangeline. They can keep their treasure and their ties to the machine. I am the mother of Evangeline.

Alex Gadd 18:07

In the sixth spot is Pink Floyd's"Mother" from The Wall. I mentioned it earlier. Gives this list one of its darkest and most psychologically complicated takes on motherhood. This isn't a song about a mother as a warm memory or as a source of wisdom. This is a song about protection curdling into control. Roger Waters writes the mother figure as someone who wants to keep her child safe from the cruel world, but in doing so, she helps scare him into building the psychological wall that separates him from ultimately everyone. What makes the song so powerful is that it never turns the mother into a cartoon villain. In a lot of ways, the song is terrifying because her instincts are recognizable. She worries, she warns, she protects. She tells him who to trust, who to fear, and what kind of world he's stepping into. But every warning and every piece of guidance becomes another brick in that wall. The love is real, but so is the worry until the concern overwhelms and becomes suffocating, and that's what makes Mother such a brilliant piece of writing. It understands that damage doesn't always come from a place of cruelty. Sometimes it comes from fear dressed up as love. This is a song every rock fan I would imagine knows, though not necessarily a song people seek out as a standalone single. It's an essential piece of the overall album, The Wall, but I'm happy to give it another purpose here. It gives us the mother not as an angel or a memory, but as a force, powerful, anxious, possessive, and impossible to escape. Helicopter moms take heed. Musically, the song moves between fragile acoustic confession and heavier, more dramatic sections, mirroring the emotional push and pull at the heart of it. It starts like a child asking questions and ends with a sense that the answers have already trapped that kid. It's not the comfortable Mother's Day entry, but it's too impactful to leave off.

19:58

Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb? Mother, do you think they'll like this song? Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls? Mother, should I build a wall? Mother, should I run for president? Mother, should I trust the government? Mama would put me in the firing line. Is it just a waste of time? Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry. Mama's gonna make all of your nightmares come true. Mama's gonna put all of her fears into you. Mama's gonna keep you right here, I know. She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing. Mama's gonna keep baby cozy and- Ooh, babe. Ooh, babe. Ooh, babe. Of course mama's gonna help build a wall. Mother, do you think she's pretty enough for me? Mother, do you think she's dangerous to me? Mama, will she tear your little boy apart? Ooh, yeah. Mother, will she break my heart? Hush now, baby, baby, don't you cry. Mama's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you. Mama won't let anyone dirty get through. Mama's gonna wait up'til you get in. Mama will always find out where you've been. Mama's gonna keep baby healthy and clean. Ooh, babe. Ooh, babe. Ooh, babe. You'll always be baby to me. Mother, did it need to be so hard?

Alex Gadd 24:56

Song five is The Rolling Stones'"Mother's Little Helper," and the Stones gave me a choice here because they also recorded"Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" But I really feel like"Mother's Little Helper" is the pick because it uses the concept of a generic mother complaining about the youth and the youth culture of the mid-'60s, and also lamenting the life of a housewife in the mid-'60s. They start the song with,"What a drag it is getting old," one of their most iconic opening lines, and it continues the sense that'60s rockers had that their parents, who were in their 40s at the time, were old and out of touch. Ten years after this song was released, when Mick Jagger was still only 32, he was famously quoted in People magazine as saying he would rather be dead than singing Satisfaction when he was 45 years old. That tells you a lot about how rock stars viewed a career in rock and roll at the time and middle age in general. Rock music was still young. In 1966, when this song was released, rock had only been around for 10 years, and by'75, when Jagger gave that quote, rock music was only 20 years old. The irony, of course, is that Jagger was still singing Satisfaction when he was 81 when I saw him in 2024 on the Hackney Diamonds tour, and The Stones are releasing a new record this July. Incredible. But getting back to the song, underneath that youth versus age attitude, Mother's Little Helper is more than just another'60s song about parents not understanding their kids. It's a biting portrait of a woman sold the dream of respectable domestic life who discovers that that dream is exhausting. She's anxious, she's bored, overburdened, and just trying to get through the day with a little pharmaceutical assistance. The Stones are still sneering, but they're not sneering at the mother, they're sneering at the system around her, the perfect home, the obedient family, the expectation that a woman should quietly hold everything together and smile while doing it. So again, not a warm Mother's Day song, and it doesn't give us the mother as a saint, a memory, or a source of wisdom. But it does give us a real frustrated adult trapped inside the expectations of her time. And because it's The Rolling Stones, they make that social commentary feel real edgy. On a list paying homage to mothers, this song reminds us that rock and roll was not just about celebrating youth. Sometimes it was also about reflecting what the adult world was doing to the people who lived inside it, especially in rock and roll's early years when rock was still about youth culture and rebellion.

27:24

What a drag it is getting old. Kids are different today, I hear every mother say. Mother needs something today to calm her down. And though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill. She goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper and it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day. Things are different today, I hear every mother say. Cooking fresh food for her husband's just a drag. So she buys an instant cake, and she buys a frozen steak, and goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper and to help her on her way, gets her through her busy day. Doctor please, some more of these. Outside the door, she took four more. What a drag it is getting old. Men just aren't the same today, I hear every mother say. They just don't appreciate that you get tired. They're so hard to satisfy, you could tranquilize your man. So go running for the shelter of a mother's little helper and it will help you through the night, help to minimize your plight. Doctor please, some more of these. Outside the door, she took four more. What a drag it is getting old. Life's just much too hard today, I hear every mother say. The pursuit of happiness just seems a bore. And if you take more of those, you will get an overdose. No more running for the shelter of a mother's little helper. It just helps you on your way through your busy dying day.

Alex Gadd 29:59

Coming in at number four is Mama Tried, which was originally written by country legend Merle Haggard, and then covered by a ton of different country musicians, from Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash to Reba McEntire and more recently, The Avett Brothers. But for this list, I'm going with the classic rock and roll version, which I think is the one by the Grateful Dead, specifically from their 71 live album, Grateful Dead, better known as the Skull Roses album. What makes Mama Tried such a strong fit for this list is that the mother is not the background. She's the moral center of the song. The narrator made the bad choices, ended up in prison, and has to live with what he's become. But the song keeps circling back to the woman who tried to steer him right. She worked, she sacrificed, taught him better, and he knows it. That's the emotional hook, not just guilt, but the specific guilt of disappointing the one person who loved him enough to never give up on him. And the Grateful Dead version gives that story a different life. Merle Haggard's original has that tight Bakersfield, no-frills country feel. But the Dead turn it into something looser, like a Dead song will, road worn and communal, almost like a bar band confession from a guy who's told the story too many times but still feels the sting every time he gets to the chorus. It's not sentimental, but it is deeply respectful. The narrator doesn't blame his mother. He blames himself, and that's why Mama Tried is on my list. It's one of rock and country's great acknowledgments that a mother can do everything right and still not save her child from him or herself. From personal experience, both my own child and in raising my daughter, I've seen again and again that some kids just have to learn life lessons for themselves, no matter how hard their parents try to share hard-earned wisdom with them. Uh, I was certainly that way.

31:50

First thing I remember knowing was a lonesome whistle blowing and a young'un's dream of growing up to ride. On a freight train leaving town, not knowing where I'm bound. No one could steer me right, but Mama tried. One and only little child from a family meek and mild. Mama seemed to know how to lay it down. Despite all my Sunday learning, toward the bad I kept on turning, till Mama couldn't hold me anymore. Then I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole. No one could steer me right, but Mama tried, Mama tried. Mama tried to raise me better but her pleading fell on deaf ears. That leaves no one for me to blame'cause Mama tried. Dear old Daddy, rest his soul, left my mama a heavy load. She tried so very hard to fill his shoes. Working hours without rest, wanting me to have the best. She tried to raise me right, but I refused. Then I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole. No one could steer me right, but Mama tried, Mama tried. Mama tried to raise me better but her pleading fell on deaf ears. That leaves no one for me to blame'cause Mama tried. Then I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole. No one could steer me right, but Mama tried, Mama tried. Mama tried to raise me better but her pleading fell on deaf ears. That leaves no one for me to blame'cause Mama tried. That leaves no one for me to blame'cause Mama tried.

Alex Gadd 34:17

Mother's Day song three is Always On The Run by Lenny Kravitz. This is another track about recounting lessons passed down by the singer's mother. In this case, Lenny's mother was The Jeffersons star, Roxie Roker. And what makes this one such a great fit is that it doesn't sound like a traditional song about a mother. It has a pure early'90s rock sound. It's swaggering. It's got a big riff, a big groove. Slash is there blasting out the solo like he wandered into the wrong studio thinking it was a Guns N' Roses session and decided to set the room on fire anyway. But underneath all that muscle, the song is built around advice."My mama said," becomes the organizing idea of the track, with Kravitz running through lessons his mother gave him about love. With Kravitz running through lessons his mother gave him about love, pride, money, faith, and self-respect. It gives that s- it gives the song that emotional center That gives the song its emotional center. It's not a soft tribute, and it's not written like a ballad. It's a mother's wisdom turned into a rock'n' roll sermon, the kind of advice that sticks because it was given before you were old enough to understand how right it was. And so I put Always on the Run on this list so high because I love it, A, and it proves that a great mother song doesn't have to be gentle or sentimental. Sometimes it can strut, sometimes it can rock out, sometimes it can sound like a man racing through the world with his mother's voice still riding shotgun. Behind the funk rock atti- behind that rock and roll attitude is a son acknowledging that wherever he goes and whatever trouble he finds, the lessons from his mother are still riding right beside him.

36:05

My mama said that your life is a gift. And my mama said there's much we do live. And my mama said,"Leave those bad boys alone." And my mama said,"Be home before the dawn." And my mama said,"You can be rich or poor." But my mama said,"You can be big or small."'Cause I'm always on the run. Always on the run.'Cause I'm always on the run. My mama said that it's good to be broke. But my mama said,"Don't take more than a mouthful." And my mama said that it's hard to be natural. And my mama said that it's good to be factual.'Cause I'm always on the run. Always on the run.'Cause I'm always on the run. And my mama said,"Better know why than take a cause." And my mama said,"You must work with no pause." And my ma- And Mama said,"Go and call that young actor." And Mama said,"Love's all around." You better move on the floor. Always on the floor. You better move on the floor. You better move on the floor. Always on the floor. You better move on the floor. What's that, Mama? Do it right now. Yeah!

Alex Gadd 39:20

At number two is Lynyrd Skynyrd's Simple Man, one of the great mother-to-son songs in all of rock'n' roll, and one of my all-time favorite songs. It's built around a mother giving her son the kind of advice meant to last a lifetime. Don't chase what doesn't matter. Don't lose yourself trying to be something you're not. Find love, live honestly, and become the kind of man who can look himself in the mirror. What makes Simple Man so powerful to me is the way it turned plainspoken wisdom into something almost sacred. The mother in the song doesn't give complicated instructions. She gives values. Be patient, be humble, don't live for money, trust yourself. And because Ronnie Van Zant sings it with such conviction, the advice doesn't feel corny or small. It feels earned. It sounds like something passed down at a kitchen table or on a front porch, or in one of those quiet conversations a son doesn't fully appreciate until years later. That's why I put Simple Man on the list at number two. It may not have the psychological darkness of Pink Floyd's Mother or the personal grief of some of the other songs on this list, but it has something that's just as lasting, a mother's voice becoming a moral compass. The song endures because the message is simple without being shallow. In a rock world full of rebellion, excess, and noise, Lynyrd Skynyrd gave us a song where the most powerful thing a mother can offer her son isn't rescue or control or even forgiveness. It's the steady instruction to become a decent man.

40:49

Mama told me when I was young. She sat beside me."My only son. Listen closely to what I say. And if you do this, it'll help you some sunny day." Oh, yeah. Be a simple man. Oh, take your time. Don't live too fast. Some thoughts will come. Mm, they will pass. Go find a woman. Oh, baby, you will find love. And don't forget, son, to give to someone else first. Baby, be a simple kind of man. Oh, be something you love and understand. Baby, be a simple, be a simple man. Oh, won't you do this for me, son, if you can? Forget your lust for the rich man's gold. All that you need, Lord, Lord, is in your soul. And you can do this, oh, baby, if you try. All that I want for you, my- My son, to be satisfied. And be a simple kind of man. Be something you love and understand. Baby, be a simple, oh, be a simple man. Oh, won't you do this for me, son, if you can? Oh, yes, I will. Oh, I'm gonna be a simple

Alex Gadd 44:22

Now, before we get to the top song on our Mother's Day playlist, I want to acknowledge some of the other songs I considered. There's"Mama" by Genesis from one of my all-time favorite albums, their 1983 self-titled album. The Stones, I mentioned"Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" There's"Mama I'm Coming Home" by Ozzy Osbourne, which of course isn't about his mother, but is written to his wife. The Beatles'"Your Mother Should Know," and then the other songs titled"Mother," the Danzig version, the John Lennon version, The Police version, which are very different and disturbing in their own ways. And then the Smashing Pumpkins'"For Martha," which is Billy Corgan's song about his mother who passed away when he was young. That one covers some of the same ground as the Metallica and The Beatles songs already on the list, so I excluded it, but it's a decent song from The Smashing Pumpkins. You should check it out. Now, one song I expected to include on the list but dropped after doing some more research was Paul Simon's"Mother and Child Reunion," which I discovered was written about the death of Paul Simon's family's dog, and the title supposedly came from a Chinese restaurant menu item a dish that had both chicken and egg, the mother and child reunion. So that kinda ruined it for me as a Mother's Day song. But y-you can have it on your list, and it'll be on our playlist. Finally, the hardest one for me not to include was Aerosmith's"Mama Kin," guns N' Roses recorded a great version of it 15 years after the original came out, and, uh, I love that song, but it's really not about a mother at all. Anyway, all those songs had some merit, but I could only choose 10. So let's get to number one, and the number one Mother's Day song on my list is another one by The Beatles, and one of their most powerful songs, 1970s Let It Be. Like Julia, this is a Beatles song where the mother connection is not obvious unless you know the story behind it. On the surface, Mother Mary can sound like a religious reference, and the song itself has the feel of a hymn. It's calm, spiritual, kinda church-like. But Paul McCartney has explained that the inspiration came from a dream he had during a difficult period in The Beatles' final years when his mother, named Mary, who had died when he was a teenager, came to him in a dream with a simple message"Let it be." And to me, that's what makes this song so moving. It's not about a long conversation or a detailed memory, or a mother giving a full list of life lessons. It's built around one phrase, the kind of phrase a mother might say when everything feels too complicated or too painful and too hard to fix. And in the middle of The Beatles' collapse, with the biggest band in the world falling apart in real time, Paul McCartney turned that private moment into something universal. Everyone has been in a place where they wanted a voice of comfort to tell them to stop fighting the storm and just be. And that's why Let It Be is my number one Mother's Day song. It's not only one of The Beatles' greatest songs, it's one of rock's greatest examples of a mother's presence lasting beyond her lifetime. Mary McCartney is not physically there in any way in the song, but her voice becomes the center of it. She doesn't solve the problem. She doesn't explain the pain away. She simply offers peace, and that's the power of a great mother song. Sometimes the most important thing a mother can give you isn't an answer, but the strength to keep going when you don't have an answer.

47:51

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be. And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be. Let it be, let it be. Let it be, let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be. And when the broken-hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be. But though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see. There will be an answer, let it be. Let it be, let it be. Let it be, let it be. Yeah, there will be an answer, let it be. Let it be, let it be. Let it be, let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be. Let it be, let it be. Let it be, yeah, let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be. And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me. Shine until tomorrow, let it be. I wake up to the sound of music- Mother Mary comes to me. Speaking words of wisdom. Let it be. Yeah, let it be. Let it be. Let it be. Yeah, let it be. There will be an answer. Let it be. Let it be. Let it be. Let it be. Yeah, let it be. There will be an answer. Let it be. Yeah, let it be. Let it be. Let it be. Yeah, let it be. A whisper of the wind.

Alex Gadd 51:38

Well, that's it for this week's episode. Thank you for joining me. If you like what you heard today, I'd appreciate it if you would first like and then either subscribe or follow this channel to make sure you get notified about each new episode, and please tell your friends. Also, a reminder that I release a playlist for every episode of the show, so look for The Rock-N-Roll Show podcast playlist on Apple Music and Spotify every week, this week featuring the songs that I mentioned here today, so check that out, and play it on Mother's Day. Additionally, I wanna know what you think, so please leave me a comment. I'll try to respond to every one of them. The Rock-N-Roll Show podcast is a World Highway Media production. I'm your host, Alex Gadd, and until next time, remember that life is short. So get those concert tickets