Happy Mother’s Day! In recognition of this annual celebration of martyrdom—sorry mother-dom—I initially considered writing something deeply personal and significant. I was going to pitch my editor an essay about my increasingly fraught relationship with my mother, a piece which would also explore the disproportionate burden of care that I think single queer adult children often get saddled with as their parents age. Like, Cool, your presumption of heterosexuality messed me up so much that I’m unable to have a functional relationship, so obviously I’m free to move back home to stop you from becoming a weird hoarder and/or sell all your gold jewelry to someone on Fox News!
But I didn’t do any of that. Instead, I decided to just listen to every recording of the Tori Amos song “Mother” that I could find to see what would happen.
Huh, you’re saying to yourself, that is a mood.
Also, you may be wondering, why Tori Amos’s “Mother?” Why not, like, any other song about someone’s mom? Like, why not an actual cultural touchstone like Tupac’s “Dear Mama?” Or remember that song “Mother Mother” from the 90s? That’s a song that people remember, right? I mean, Tori Amos’s “Mother” wasn’t a single. And it’s not even a song that I associate with my own mother. It’s not like it’s the song I listened to when, in the middle of an argument when I was 16, my mom told me that I was lucky she and my dad hadn’t kicked me out of the house when I came out, because that’s what happened to gay kids back then. I mean it really actually isn’t.
I dunno, mostly it’s just the first thing—well, the second thing; see above re: fraught relationship, etc.—that comes to mind when I think about Mother’s Day. And, in the late 1990s, I was my high school’s foremost Tori Amos scholar. I read every interview I could get my hands on. I checked fan sites daily for the latest on new releases and TV appearances. I would pore over her seemingly nonsensical lyrics and play her songs over and over, until my mom would scream at me in a way that was absolutely proportional to the situation to turn the music off because the lady who was hosting her Tupperware party was here!
But this has nothing to do with that. All I’m saying is that over-analyzing a kind of obscure album track from Tori Amos’s 1992 debut album is pretty much in my wheelhouse. You know, not to brag or anything.
The song’s lyrics are pretty typical of this period of Amos’s career. Some songs kinda seem like they could be charitably described as flirting with Dadaist metaphor, while others sound more like they might just be random words that work with the melody. With its feminine imagery and themes of growing up and loss of innocence, I’m putting “Mother” in the former category:
“Go go go go now / out of the nest it’s time / go go go now / circus girl without a safety net / here here now / don’t cry / you raised your hand for the assignment…”
The thing is, I’m not sure “Mother” is even about Amos’s actual mother. Here’s what she had to say about it in the Little Earthquakes songbook: “A memory of ‘the fall.’ Not the one we’ve been taught, but the other side of the story, which is the belief of certain ancient mythologies. “Mother” changed me because I began to remember, where I believe, we come from.”
So, when she sings “without a safety net,” Amos is probably not referencing, for instance, this one time when she was in her early mid-20s and didn’t know anything about doing her taxes so she asked her mom for help, and her mom was like, “Don’t worry, I’ll do your taxes for you.” But her mom didn’t do her taxes. And she didn’t say anything about it until Tori Amos got a notice from the IRS the following year saying she owed back taxes and fines. No, that is definitely not something that happened to Tori Amos, and it’s not what this song is about.
Of course, Amos has always said that her songs are open to interpretation, that different people will relate to them in ways that she never intended, and that’s fine. So, maybe when you hear her sing “brides in veils for you / we told you all of our secrets / all but one / so don’t you even try / the phone has been disconnected,” you’re thinking of the last time you had to hang up on your Chardonnay drunk mom because she’s asking you whether you “have someone” and also when is Bridgerton coming back? And you’re like, now you want to know about my personal life? And for what? So that you can shame me for being single like some Kafkaesque gay Bridget Jones cliché? What is happening?
Maybe “Mother” is meant to be a balm as well as a lance. It is this kind of gentle, searching ballad that can make you feel safe when you need to do some real introspection. It’s there for you when you search your soul and discover in the deepest, darkest part of you that when Netflix’s press team does inevitably send out an email announcing Bridgerton’s Season 2 premiere date, you will withhold that information from your mother. You’ll claim you have no idea when Bridgerton is coming back. And you won’t feel guilty. Not even a little bit.
