Driving home from work last night, I heard the song Too Late to Turn Back Now. It’s a great song but I’d never really paid much attention to the lyrics beyond the chorus, and I noticed that it’s one of quite a few songs that contain advice from a mother to a child (most of whom, but not all, are boys or young men).
[ul]
[li]“Please beware: there’s a thing called love, and it’s everywhere.” Too Late to Turn Back Now – Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose[/li][li]“There’ll be days like this.” Mama Said – The Shirelles[/li][li]“Take your time; don’t live too fast. Troubles will come, and they will pass.” Simple Man – Lynyrd Skynyrd[/li][li]“Before you ask some girl for her hand now, keep your freedom for as long as you can now.” Shop Around – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles[/li][li]“That ain’t the way to have fun, uh-uh.” Mama Told Me Not To Come – written and later recorded by Randy Newman but made famous first by Eric Burdon and the Animals and later Three Dog Night[/li][/ul]
What other songs have words to live by from dear ol’ Mom?
You Can’t Hurry Love
Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)
Magic Man
I Hope You Dance
Fancy (by Reba, not Iggy)
I’ll Be There For You, the theme from FRIENDS.
Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours to see
Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
Mama Tried
Don’t Take Your Guns To Town
Lollipop by Mika
Blues In The Night by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer.
This one is actually advice *for *mothers – not *from *them. Incidentally, I saw Willie (who covered this Ed Bruce song with Waylon) this weekend at a concert with Kacey Musgraves in Denver. Great, great show.
“When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me.
Speaking words of wisdom, Let it Be” - The Beatles
Mother by Pink Floyd
“Hush now baby, baby don’t you cry
Mama’s gonna make all of your nightmares come true
Mama won’t let anyone dirty get through”
“Hush little baby don’t you cry
Soon the sun is going to shine
We’re going to be free like the birds and the bees
Running wild in the big country.” – Got to Be Free, the Kinks
A song with a notable exception is CeeLo Green’s “Fuck You”:
I tried to tell my mamma but she told me “this is one for your dad”
The Shangri Las I Can Never Go Home Anymore. A really underrated tune.
Mama Told Me Not To Come, Three Dog Night
Oops, that one is buried in the OP.
“That’s the Way” - Led Zeppelin (“Mama said…that’s the way it oughta be.”)
“Surrender” - Cheap Trick ('Mommy told me, yes she told, me, I’d meet girls like you. She also told me, stay away, you’ll never know what you’ll catch.")
“Simple Man,” Skynyrd.
When I was just a baby
My mama told me, Son,
Always be a good boy,
Don’t ever play with guns.
–Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues
The song hailed by Lawrence Welk as “a modern spiritual”, Brewer and Shipley’s One Toke Over the Line, includes the line “I felt the joy and I learned about the pain that my momma said/If I should choose to make a part of me, would surely strike me dead”.
“But mama said
You can’t hurry love
No, you just have to wait
She said love don’t come easy
It’s a game of give and take” - You Can’t Hurry Love, The Supremes (or Phil Collins, depending on your generation)
Rod Stewart’s Forever Young