"Your Mother Should Know": История песни The Beatles и её отражение в творчестве Брэда Мелдау

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"Your Mother Should Know" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, from their 1967 EP and LP, Magical Mystery Tour. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. Titled after a line in the 1961 film A Taste of Honey, its lyrical premise centres on the history of hit songs across generations. McCartney said he wrote it as a plea for generational understanding and respect for a mother's life experience. In the Magical Mystery Tour television film, the song serves as a big production number in the style of a 1930s Hollywood musical. Some commentators view the sequence as cultural satire, as the Beatles are seen dancing and dressed in white evening tails. "Your Mother Should Know" is written in the music hall style, as was McCartney's earlier composition, "When I'm Sixty Four". He first offered it as the Beatles' contribution to the Our World satellite broadcast in June 1967, but the band favoured John Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" for its social significance. The initial sessions for "Your Mother Should Know" took place at Chappell Recording Studios in London, towards the end of August. The group were visited there by their manager, Brian Epstein, the last time he joined them in the studio before his death on the 27th of August.

Paul McCartney began writing "Your Mother Should Know" on a harmonium at his house in St John's Wood, London, in the company of his Aunty Jin and Uncle Harry, and drew on his father's love of music hall. The conversation he had with his family members that day inspired the subject matter of the song. Its lyrical premise centres on the history of hit songs across generations. McCartney took the title from a line in the 1961 film A Taste of Honey, which tells of a white teenage girl who falls pregnant with a black man's child and withholds news of the pregnancy from her domineering mother. Discussing "Your Mother Should Know" in his 1997 authorised biography, Many Years from Now, McCartney said he sought to address the issue of generation barriers. He lamented how an argument between a mother and her child could have enduring consequences for their relationship, and added: "So I was advocating peace between the generations I was basically trying to say, your mother might know more than you think she does. Give her credit." McCartney said he envisaged the song as a "production number" while planning the Beatles' 1967 television film Magical Mystery Tour. After the band finished recording the film's title song in May that year, the project lay dormant because John Lennon and George Harrison had little enthusiasm for it. McCartney first offered "Your Mother Should Know" as the Beatles' contribution to the Our World satellite broadcast in June, but the band favoured Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" for its social significance.

On the Beatles' recording, "Your Mother Should Know" is performed in the key of A minor and its time signature is 4/4. The use of piano crotchet chords is typical of McCartney's compositions of the time, starting with "Got to Get You into My Life" in 1966. The song's rhythm suggests a foxtrot, a quality it shares with "Catcall" (formerly titled "Catwalk"), One of the verse choruses includes vocalised "da da da"s in place of lyrics, representing the singalong tradition of music hall.

"Your Mother Should Know", and the five other songs from the film, were compiled for release on the Magical Mystery Tour double EP, except in the United States. There, Capitol Records chose to create an LP by augmenting those songs with the Beatles' non album single tracks from 1967. The Capitol release took place on 27 November 1967, while Parlophone issued the EP on 8 December. Already familiar to fans before the film's debut, the soundtrack record was a commercial success. The BBC scheduled Magical Mystery Tour for prime time viewing during the Christmas holiday season, during which regular programming usually consisted of family sitcoms and variety shows. The film was broadcast in the UK on BBC1 on 26 December, but in black and white rather than colour. It was savaged by reviewers, earning the Beatles their first public and critical failure. As a result of the unfavourable reviews, networks in the US declined to show the film. According to author Barry Miles, Magical Mystery Tour baffled the British public because "many viewers were assuming that the show would be the kind of song and dance spectacular that the closing 'Your Mother Should Know' sequence satirised." Peter Brown, an executive at Epstein's company NEMS, was critical of the project's disorganisation and McCartney's extravagance when filming his "top hat and cane dance number" and the segment for "The Fool on the Hill". He said that "if Brian had been alive, it never would have happened the way it did."

Bob Dawbarn of Melody Maker described the Magical Mystery Tour EP as "six tracks which no other pop group in the world could begin to approach for originality combined with the popular touch". He said that "Your Mother Should Know" was "one of the two most instantly attractive songs", the other being "The Fool on the Hill", with "a tune that sticks in the memory first time round". In Record Mirror, Norman Jopling wrote: "'Your Mother Should Know' is [a] medium tempo ballad with a corny sort of tune – but the atmosphere developed is fantastic. It's a hazy, stoned kind of sensation which reminds you of hearing old tunes, in smoky rooms "

Among reviews of the American LP, Richard Goldstein of The New York Times complained that the new songs furthered the "electronic posturing" of Sgt. Pepper and showed the Beatles overly focused on motif and overall effect. He said that "Magical Mystery Tour" and "its nostalgic refrain, 'Your Mother Should Know'" were "motifs disguised as songs", adding: "Both declare their moods (in stock musical phrases) but neither succeeds in establishing them. Instead, these cuts are as tedious and stuffy as an after dinner speech." Writing in Esquire, Robert Christgau considered three of the soundtrack songs to be "disappointing", particularly "The Fool on the Hill", but cited the "tender camp of 'Your Mother Should Know'" as one of the reasons to buy the album. Rex Reed, in a highly unfavourable review of the LP for HiFi/Stereo Review, did not care for the track at all, calling it "nothing more than a Gaslight Era cabaret tune full of da das and yeah yeahs". In Tim Riley's view, the Magical Mystery Tour songs were largely uninspired recreations of Sgt. Pepper, and he described "Your Mother Should Know" as "'When I'm Sixty Four' in knickers". He said that although the harmonic ideas are "bright and clever", the instrumental bridges interrupt rather than complement the verses, and the inclusion of the "da da da" singalong "make[s] it sound like a demo with dummy lyrics". Jonathan Gould also saw the soundtrack as a lesser version of Sgt. Pepper and described "Your Mother Should Know" as a "halfhearted attempt at satiric nostalgia in the style of 'When I'm Sixty Four'". He said the song appeared unfinished and, while it served its purpose in the film, and showed Starr to be "the leading vaudeville drummer in rock", the track was "lackluster" on record. Ian MacDonald considered the stereo panning to be innovative but also a ruse "to conceal the fact that its author hadn't managed to think up a middle eight". He viewed that as indicative of the effects of McCartney's LSD intake in the months following Sgt. Pepper, notwithstanding his efforts to arrest the Beatles' apathy when they regrouped after their summer break to record the track.

The song has been covered by artists such as Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen, Phyllis Newman, Bud Shank, Travis Shook and Mike Batt.