FEATURE:
Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure
Scissor Sisters – Take Your Mama
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IN this current…
Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure, I am spotlighting a song that has been featured on one or two guilty pleasures lists. I am trying to show that there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure; one should never feel guilty about liking any song – although there is such a thing as good and bad music. Today, I am concentrating on a track that I am a big fan of. 2012’s Magic Hour is the fourth and most-recent album from Scissor Sisters. Their debut of 2004, Scissor Sisters, is one of the best albums from the first half of the ‘00s. Of the amazing songs on that album is the hit single, Take Your Mama. I am not sure why some feel the song is a guilty pleasure. Maybe there is a sense of self-consciousness singing along to it. In terms of its background and origin, Take Your Mama has an interesting history – and it made quite an impression on the charts around the world:
“Take Your Mama" is a song by American band Scissor Sisters and is the second track on their self-titled debut album. The song, written by Babydaddy and Jake Shears at Shears' parents' horse farm in West Virginia, was inspired by Shears' coming out to his mother, whom he is close with. The lyrics feature a homosexual man showing his mother the activities of gay nightlife in order to bond with her following his coming out.
The single was released on March 29, 2004, peaking at number 17 on the UK Singles Chart and receiving a silver certification from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) in December 2018. It also saw success in other regions, most notably in New Zealand, where it reached number 11 on the RIANZ Singles Chart. In Australia, where the song peaked at number 40, it was ranked number 23 on Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2004”.
Just over seventeen years old, I wonder whether there are songs like Take Your Mama around today. Maybe L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ music has changed and advanced since 2004 - though I feel there is still assumption that mainstream music should be heteronormative. Do L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists have the chance to be expressive and true?! Not only is Take Your Mama an anthem for so many people around the world; the Scissor Sisters’ eponymous debut remains a classic. This is what Blender had to say about the album:
“They dress in bi-curious thrift-store tat and are named after a lesbian sex position. They’ve got silly names (Baby Daddy, Ana Matronic, Paddy Boom, etc.), four out of five of them are men and — yes, you worked it out — they aren’t sisters. You’d imagine that the Scissor Sisters deal in aggressive performance-installation rock. Instead, this is a world-class disco-pop outfit who resemble the Bee Gees, Supertramp and 10cc, all at their best, all at the same time.
More than anything, Scissor Sisters sound like a science-fiction Elton John from back when he made boogie-ing party records instead of overripe ballads. There’s a rare feel-good accessibility that alchemizes their raw materials — the flotsam and jetsam of half-remembered ’70s and ’80s pop radio — and makes them new. Handled with less love, this could feel like a smug wander through an ironic record collection. Here, it becomes sexy, life-affirming pop.
If they’re a fashion band, they don’t act like one: Scissor Sisters cast aside notions of cool, making this possibly the least uptight album ever made. “Laura” opens with vamping pianos and the return, after two decades’ exile, of the crazed, wind-in-the-hair saxophone solo. “Take Your Mama Out” adds yet more rollicking piano; by track three they’re erecting a swirling glitterball above Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” and turning it into a disco workout complete with scrotum-clenching male falsetto in the Gibb Brothers mold.
A combination of invention and humor (singer Jake Shears enlivens “Laura” with a Michael Jackson–ish “Chamone!”) carries them forward irresistibly. The Sisters’ traditional, even comforting songwriting gets to borrow some of the mind-emptying joy of the dance floor, and everyone goes home happy.
Subject-wise, we’re in an updated Warholian demimonde, home to the freak, the transvestite and the “lovey-dovey ghetto princess,” but it’s an upbeat version where dreams can come true. Even on “Return to Oz,” which tots up the damage crystal meth has done to gay men in New York, there’s hope to be found somewhere, even if it’s only over the rainbow. Scissor Sisters are too in love with pop to let the dirt rub off on them, and this spectacular debut might make you feel invincible, too”.
One does hear Take Your Mama played from time to time. It is a song that everyone can appreciate and bond with, yet I have some class it as a guilty pleasure. It has been covered a fair bit since its release. Wolf Alice performed a version at Glastonbury 2015:
“North London’s Wolf Alice have offered up a rendition of Scissor Sisters‘ 2004 hit ‘Take Your Mama’.
The cover was performed in a BBC live session at Glastonbury Festival over the weekend. The group were joined during the performance by Swim Deep‘s Austin Williams, who played piano for the song.
Glastonbury Festival 2015 saw Wolf Alice perform two sets in total, a surprise outing on the Williams Green stage on Thursday night followed by a Friday evening set on the Park Stage.
During the latter set, Wolf Alice battled technical problems and poor weather conditions to pull off a triumpant performance”.
If you have not played Take Your Mama for a while, go and give it a spin. Also, investigate the Scissor Sisters album. It is a gem that has lost none of its charm and spark since 2004. I think Take Your Mama is one of the finest songs from that album. As the weather is getting warmer and restrictions are easing across the U.K. (and other parts of the world), I think that Take Your Mama is a song to play loud…
AND lose yourself in.