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Genesis, Mama - this 1983 song played on the radio late one night when I must have been between 11 and 13 years old, and I taped it. It hinted at an alternate dark spooky world. Thump thump. Thump thump. (Don't break, don't break.) A part of the music spoke to me deeply, a part of it repelled me. I don't think I ever heard the song again on the radio, at least not *that* version. *That* version was something that could only play late at night, in the dark, found by chance while scrolling through stations on my radio.
The opening music before the vocals is simply awesome.
The lyrics didn't make much sense. Surely he couldn't be singing about his mother. I knew he must have been calling his girlfriend "Mama", but that still evoked an uncomfortable sense of incest to my mind. I had never heard anyone else call their girlfriend "Mama". The other part that repelled me was the crazy/evil laugh.
The line "It's getting so hard" meant only "It's getting so difficult", to my mind. The alternate sense only occurred to me today upon reading the lyrics. I wouldn't have understand that other sense back then. The "oh ooooooooooooh!!!" after the line was a perfect expression of pain/feeling/longing/suffering. (Shout, shout, let it all out, but that's another song.)
The Wikipedia page for the song has a quote from Phil Collins explaining what the lyrics are about.
"...and that's really what the song is about, with sinister overtones".
Sinister. Yes, that is the word. The laughter is definitely sinister.
The opening music before the vocals is simply awesome.
The lyrics didn't make much sense. Surely he couldn't be singing about his mother. I knew he must have been calling his girlfriend "Mama", but that still evoked an uncomfortable sense of incest to my mind. I had never heard anyone else call their girlfriend "Mama". The other part that repelled me was the crazy/evil laugh.
The line "It's getting so hard" meant only "It's getting so difficult", to my mind. The alternate sense only occurred to me today upon reading the lyrics. I wouldn't have understand that other sense back then. The "oh ooooooooooooh!!!" after the line was a perfect expression of pain/feeling/longing/suffering. (Shout, shout, let it all out, but that's another song.)
The Wikipedia page for the song has a quote from Phil Collins explaining what the lyrics are about.
"...and that's really what the song is about, with sinister overtones".
Sinister. Yes, that is the word. The laughter is definitely sinister.