Mama (Genesis song)

The song's theme involves a young man's longing for a particular prostitute. On the DVD The Genesis Songbook, the band and producer Hugh Padgham revealed that the inspiration for Collins' laugh came from rap music pioneer Grandmaster Flash's song "The Message".

From the 1983 Genesis Three into One Wavelength 3-LP vinyl radio show interview:

Our manager, when he first heard it, thought it was about abortion, the kind of feeling of the, you know, the fetus, if you like, saying to the Mother 'Please give me a chance, can't you feel my heart, don't take away my last chance', all those lyrics are in the song but in fact what it is, is just about a young teenager that's got a mother fixation with a prostitute that he's just happened to have met in passing and he has such a strong feeling for her and doesn't understand why she isn't interested in him. It's a bit like [British actor] David Niven in The Moon's a Balloon, I don't know if you've read that book, he's very young, just come out of cadet college or whatever, and he meets this quite, you know, 45-year-old prostitute who he has a fantastic time with. He's special to her but it definitely can't go any further than what it is and that's really what the song is about, with sinister overtones.

— Phil Collins

The Linn LM-1 rhythm was programmed by Mike Rutherford, rather than drummer Collins. It was fed through a gated reverb unit and then into a Mesa Boogie amplifier with a large amount of distortion. Tony Banks used a Synclavier, ARP Quadra, E-mu Emulator, and Sequential Circuits Prophet-10 in the recording. The Quadra's rhythmic pulses were triggered by the 16th note hi-hat pattern coming from the Linn drum machine. A low E drone was recorded on the Prophet-10 through most of the song. A koto, which happened to be in the studio one day, was sampled into the Emulator and used in the song because it was felt that no other sound worked in the section.[4]

The music video for the song plays out the lyrics, showing Collins singing to a mysterious woman while Banks and Rutherford play in the background. One sequence involves Collins, cloaked in shadows and illuminated by a red light (at approximately 3 minutes 30 seconds into the video). The video is shot in a sepia tone until 2 minutes 40 seconds into the video when colour fades in. When performed live, white lights were shone from underneath the stage to recreate this sequence.

There are at least four versions of the studio recording of "Mama": the original, full-length cut (7:27, released as a 12" single and later as a CD single, backed by the full-length 6:27 version of "It's Gonna Get Better", also from the Genesis album); a somewhat early-faded version (6:46, released on the Genesis album itself); an edited version (6:07, released as a 7" single and on the compilation album Turn It On Again – Best of '81–'83); and a heavily edited version (5:18, released on the promotional video, promo DJ 7" and 12" singles, and the 1999 compilation album Turn It On Again: The Hits). An extremely rare 3:30 and heavily edited version was released on a 1983 Italian promo 7-inch. This remains the shortest edited version of the song. A 10:43 rehearsal take, dating from 1983 and referred to as a "work in progress", is included at the end of the third disc of Genesis Archive 2: 1976–1992. This demonstrated how Genesis would try out new songs; the band would play while Phil Collins would just sing anything that came to mind, normally without actual words.

The song was played live during the Mama,[5] Invisible Touch,[6] We Can't Dance,[7] Calling All Stations[8] (with Ray Wilson on vocals), and Turn It On Again[9] tours.

A live version appears on their albums The Way We Walk, Volume One: The Shorts and Live Over Europe 2007, and their DVDs Genesis Live at Wembley Stadium and When in Rome 2007. The song also appears on the 1985 home video release The Mama Tour.

• Phil Collins – vocals, electronic drums
• Tony Banks – synthesizers
• Mike Rutherford – Gibson SG electric guitar, bass guitar, drum machine Linn LM-1

"Mama" was covered by the band Magellan on the 1996 Genesis tribute album Supper's Ready. The song was also covered by the French extreme metal band Carnival in Coal and released on their album French Cancan (1999). Brazilian power metal band Angra covered the song on their EP Hunters and Prey (2002). "Mama" was covered by the Finnish heavy metal band Tarot as the second track on the single for "Undead Son", the only single release from their 2003 album Suffer Our Pleasures.

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics