Songs for My Mom

Barenaked Ladies and Fountains of Wayne

And, of course, a happy Mother’s day to the inimitable Betty Draper

I don’t actually remember the first song my mother showed me, but I’m sure it was very good. We had a bunch of CDs, and we listened to all of them. It wasn’t kid’s music, either. Beach Boys, Imogen Heap, Belle & Sebastian. The Los Lonely Boys, the Barenaked Ladies. There was a lot of Barenaked Ladies, actually.

I remember being a pre-teen and listening to their bizarrely long and depressing story song “The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel,” and trying to decide if it was the best song I ever heard, or only top-10 (with the benefit of hindsight, it isn’t top-1000). When my friend Akiva came over to play, he didn’t know what was crazier: that there was a band called the Barenaked Ladies, or that I was allowed to listen to them.

Of course, it didn’t seem so crazy to me. The idea of my mom telling me I “couldn’t” listen to music—any music—was much crazier. From a very young age, thankfully, I was encouraged to enjoy and discover as much art as possible. Stuff like that seems normal when you’re a kid, but it’s hard to even find the words to express the depth of my appreciation for it now. The vast majority of people operate with taste that ranges from dreadful to nonexistent. Thanks to my mom, above and beyond anyone else, my taste—whatever you think of it—is defensible and well-defined.

The Barenaked Ladies song I remember listening to the most was the goofy, family-friendly number “If I Had A Million Dollars.”

If I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
Well, I'd buy you a fur coat
But not a real fur coat, that's cruel
And if I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
Well, I'd buy you an exotic pet
Yep, like a llama or an emu

There’s something charming about the middle-class wish fulfillment of this song. The idea of having a “million dollars” indicates a certain naiveté on the part of the wanter. To him it’s an impossibly large sum, a number such that you’d have to think of things to buy, exotic things like fur coats and llamas and emus. The song reminds me that I never felt poor growing up despite occasionally tenuous financial circumstances, thanks in large part to my mom’s (seemingly) effortless optimism and can-do attitude.

The most prominent album of my childhood was Welcome Interstate Manager, a perfect alt-rock LP by Fountains of Wayne released in 2003. My mom played it all the time, and I loved it, so I started to play it all the time. It has deep songs about youth, small-town melancholia, and one of the best love songs ever written.

But the song I want to share for Mother’s Day is an up-temper power pop banger, “Bright Future In Sales.”

I gotta get my shit together (together)
Cause I can't live like this forever (forever)
You know I've come too far and I don't wanna fail
I got a new computer
And a bright future in sales
Yeah yeah (yeah yeah)

The song is a semi-ironic fable from the perspective of a spiraling middle-aged cubicle worker. But like everything else that Adam Schlesinger (RIP) wrote, there is a powerful streak of sincerity to it. The narrator of the song believes, on some level, that he really does have a bright future in sales.

I can’t think of a song more appropriate for my recognition of Mother’s Day, because my mom decided to become a real estate agent shortly after turning 40 and essentially free-willed her way into a wildly successful career as such. She turned out to have a very bright future in sales, although I’d love her even if she didn’t.