Quite unlike armpits, though, mothers are the subject of a few great songs. Iron & Wine’s “Upward Over the Mountain” and Smog’s “I Feel Like The Mother Of The World” are two of my favorites among the ones Howe mentions. Of course, it’s not just men that have immortalized and/or vilified their mothers in song. Plenty of female musicians have raised a musical glass to the women they came from (and may or may not, one day, become). Though lacking in Oedipal awkwardness, these songs still pack a punch.
“Oh! Mama,” Alela
Diane
Unlike the “conceptual, impossibly distant sources of
confliction” of indie rock that Howe calls out, the type of mother Alela Diane
pays tribute to in this heartstring-yanking track is a pantheon of generosity,
wisdom, love and affection—the very source of life, contemplated as her child
is about to have a daughter of her own. If you love your mom and you want to
make her cry, play this song for her!
“To Daddy,” Emmylou
Harris
If she did, she never did say so to Daddy
She never wanted to be more than a mother and a wife
If she did, she never did say so to Daddy
The only thing that seemed to be important to her life
Was to make our house a home and make us happy
Mama never wanted any more than what she had
If she did, she never did say so to Daddy
While definitely not my favorite Nellie McKay track, this
song showcases her bizarro whitegirl piano-rap in one of the most clearly
autobiographical songs of this bunch. Dropping lines like, “Been livin’ with my
mama since I was an embryo / Never had a Nintendo, saw a lot of Brecht,
though,” she fits in somewhere between Ghostface and Kanye in Howe’s schema.
One of the many, many, many things I love about the Everybodyfields is the ability of so many of their songs to ease in nice and slow, beautiful
but nearly unassuming, and then sock a big fist right in your gut. This one, from their 2004 debut Halfway
There: Electricity and the South, is one like that. It starts off like a
love song to the “boy outside,” but soon it’s clear this daughter isn’t running
to something so much as away from the woman she’s terrified of turning into:
But you’ve been silent for years
Don’t stare at that door no more
You won’t see him through your tears
Mama, don’t stand in my way
I can’t die here with you
Jill Andrews sings in her steady, sad voice about
rings and better things, but I can’t help but think that one day the girl might
find herself staring at a door through her own bleary eyes, waiting—endlessly,
hopelessly—for that boy and his Pontiac to come home, like her father never
did.
Sometimes, though, no amount of distance—emotional or
physical—can weaken the bond between mother and daughter. At face value, this
is woefully pretty tale of a mother’s aspiration, revenge, pride and greed all
wrapped up in the song’s titular garment—you don’t have to know Lewis’ back
story (she was a child actress and for many years had a rocky relationship with
her own mom) to feel the pull of its weight. Despite the bitterness may have
bloomed between this pair of women, the daughter finds herself reflecting on
the trajectory of her mom’s life as she charts her own course, seemingly
resigned to falling into the same material traps that consumed her mother. “But
mostly I'm a hypocrite / I sing songs about the deficit,” Lewis sings. “But
when I sell out and leave
Note: For your own sake, hopefully you won’t miss Mother’s
Day like I missed Rhymes With Five’s second-ever Thursday post. Whoops! Just
tell your Mama you were putting together a magazine. That’s my excuse, at
least. See you next Thursday—for real!
[Last week on Rhymes with Five: Gossip Girl stole my iPod!]
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