Mama You Sweet

FORUM › Forums › Lucinda Williams › Lucinda in general › Mama You Sweet

Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • May 7, 2009 at 6:52 am #29785
    kentmcm
    Participant

    The thread about “Which Song Would You Like Buick 6 to Play” started me thinking about the different directions that Lucinda Williams has taken her work and continues to take it. In that light, it seems to me that one of the most unusual songs she’s written that she’s recorded in her later work has been “Mama You Sweet”. The lyrics are poetry of a sort that is at once both distinctly and intensely personal and also washed in the common river of human experience. So it isn’t surprising that it would be so much in a class by itself.

    The music has me stumped, though. I’m having a hard time connecting it with some other artist’s influence. Does anyone have a nomination for a musical precursor to “Mama You Sweet”, the sort of point of departure out of which it grew? My first intuition was Sade, but the thing about intuition is that it is wrong about half the time.

    Kent

    May 7, 2009 at 11:54 am #39643
    Lefty
    Participant

    With absolutely no substantiating evidence, I’d suggest Rickie Lee Jones.

    May 8, 2009 at 4:30 am #39644
    kentmcm
    Participant

    Lefty, thanks for that.

    By the way, just as a funny footnote, when I did a bit of googling of “Mama You Sweet”, I discovered that not everyone hears the same lyrics. One website was publishing the lyric that Lucinda sings as:

    And the scars in my heart
    And this burden on my hips

    in this really odd version:

    And there’s scars in my heart
    And there’s burn on my hips

    Kent

  • Author
    Posts
Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.