10 Darkest Songs John Lennon Ever Wrote
2. My Mummy's Dead
Featured on: John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970)
Apparent from its striking title, My Mummy’s Dead, while not Lennon’s first attempt at reconciling with his mother’s death through lyrics, is certainly the darkest. Listening to the track is an eerie experience owing largely to the music’s close association with the tune of the universal nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice. Like the tune, the lyrics too have a childlike quality. Such as:
“My mummy's dead. I can't get through my head. Though it's been so many years.”
“My mummy's dead. I can't explain, so much pain. I could never show it.”
Lennon explained the childlike lyrics coming about as he initially attempted to write them as a haiku.
The song consists of just Lennon’s vocals and electric guitar. The stripped back nature adds to the confessional undertone, the musical equivalent of a private journal entry. On writing songs about his mother, Lennon said: "I didn’t sit down to think, ‘I’m going to write about my mother’ or I didn’t sit down to think, ‘I’m going to write about this, that or the other.’ They all came out, like all the best work of anybody’s ever does”.