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Home Page > Mother > Mother_1 : MOTHER OST - The Red Blimp

Review of the MOTHER Original Soundtrack

NOTE: This page involves criticism of the MOTHER OST. If you worship this and can't stand me not worshipping it either, you'd best run out of here. The following represents the opinion of a fan who only wants to present her thoughts on this soundtrack.

This is a performance of 10 tunes from the videogame MOTHER, with added melodies, lyrics, and *most amazingly*, singers~ It doesn't mean much, as most of the lyrics are pretty silly and not an example of the best pop/rock has to offer, but fans love to quote the songs anyway for their optimistic nature.

This CD was originally released 1989, so you can probably imagine that the songs will be full of cheesy 80s effects, right? Well, you get a lot of synthesizer action, but most of the time, you are treated to some nice strings or guitars and so the CD succeeds in not sounding dated. The album was re-released in 2004 with an extra track, Smiles and Tears. The best track is up for download. If you want to listen/use it, save it to your own computer!

01. POLLYANNA (I BELIEVE IN YOU) *best track!
02. BEIN' FRIENDS *
03. THE PARADISE LINE *
04. MAGICANT x
05. WISDOM OF THE WORLD
06. FLYING MAN *
07. SNOW MAN *
08. ALL THAT I NEEDED (WAS YOU) *
09. FALLIN' LOVE x
10 EIGHT MELODIES *
11. THE WORLD OF MOTHER
BONUS TRACK: 12. SMILE & TEARS (DEMO TRACK)

Images: The following images were obtained from a download a rather long time ago and as such, the files no longer exist elsewhere as far as I know. Unfortunately, it seems that the second page of the booklet did not download properly and as such, is just garbage. If you happen to have a clearer scan of this second page (or any of the other pages), I would appreciate it greatly and you'd certainly be credited.
Cover Page 1 of the booklet Page 2 (incomplete) Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Back Cover

The album has a great start with what has to be the best track on here, Pollyanna. It starts off with soft strings, and then *bam*! You get these great guitars and keyboards. This song's melody has to be the best one on here for Catherine Warwick's voice. On this track, she never sounds too high or too low; she sounds comfortable singing in a fitting register, as opposed to the constant falsetto of Bein' Friends. The added instrumental is relaxing and doesn't distract from the feel - I think it adds to it. Definitely a great song, and the lyrics are very fitting for the melody as well.

The perfection doesn't last. It continues to Bein' Friends, which was a great tune on the NES, so justice has been done to it here, right? ...Not exactly. It's still enjoyable, but it suffers from stuff that doesn't belong. The introduction goes on for far too long, and then in the middle we get this really weird reprise of the introduction with two Warwicks singing "I'm your friend, til the end!" and then men come out of nowhere going "Weh oh weh oh!" What is this? It's not like the instrumental added to Pollyanna, which doesn't stick out; this is the opposite. Then it repeats, with weird men again. At the end, they stuck this new bit on, where a quiet vocoder voice mumbles something and Warwick responds. Uh. Yah. The verses and chorus are still fantastic, though, which makes the blunders forgivable. Second-best song.

The Paradise Line is great, even if the introduction reeks of the 80s. It's got some great piano and the vocals are quite fitting. The lyrics are, as expected, pretty silly, but what do you expect? It's got a great hook (though the melody has been changed from the original NES form) and crunchy guitars. This song would be perfect for some sort of airline or train company: "Life is fine on the Paradise Line!" Seriously; American Airlines should consider changing it's name to Paradise Airlines and then use this song as the theme. "Life keeps getting better all the time (so much better) taking the Paradise Line!"

Now we getting into the padding, the filler of the album. Magicant is an instrumental, and a boring one at that. It has no place being after the rockin' Paradise Line; there's contrast, and it's not even good contrast. I guess that you could call it atmospheric, but that's all it has going for it. It's boring. The melody is hidden behind a bunch of annoying instruments. It's not like the melody's that great, either. I find myself pushing the 'Fast-Forward' when I hear the introduction.

Wisdom of the World has a great introduction with the intertwining strings, and at least Warwick's voice isn't that weird head voice that was used on Bein' Friends, but the melody here doesn't hold much promise. It was great and mysterious on the NES, sounding almost like what you'd play in a Dungeon, but here, it's far too slow and boring. I find that Mother 1 has the best music, but apparently, like EarthBound, it also has lots of forgettable tracks. Like Wisdom of The World. At least it's got a half-likable chord progression in the chorus. It picks up in the middle, but it remains annoying slow. It's not as bad as Magicant, but it's definitely not a good track. Maybe you have to listen to it a few times to start caring.

Flying Man might have ended up like Wisdom of the World were it not for the great, crazy riffs that you hear throughout it. I can't understand what the dude's saying. Forget that - I can't hear it. Well, I probably wouldn't like the lyrics, anyway. They sound pretty silly (though on closer inspection, they're the kind of happy fluff that's to be expected from this CD). There's a bridge part that's full of those riffs, and I love the harmonies. It's funny to hear this guy sing in this high voice. This is a nice track, and it has a great ending.

Snow Man is an instrumental of the piece... well, Snow Man. Hey - it's Snow Man! No way they'll mess this one up, right? Well, in my opinion, they almost do. They have these heavy, echoing bass drums during the second time the melody is repeated. I stop thinking about a Winter day and start thinking "Why are those drums there?" Then there's a part where it slows down and you start wishing it'd go faster. Otherwise, it's a good track, definitely very Winter-ish.

All That I Needed brings back this little boy on falsetto, making it even harder for us to understand what the heck he's saying. It took me a few listens to appreciate this song, but even if I now love the chorus and verses, the introduction remains slow and boring. It's not even the same introduction from the NES version of the song. Come to think of it, I think that 'All that I needed's introduction was tacked on to the beginning of Paradise Line. Well, other than the new introduction, it's quite nice and energetic. The boy has an interesting accent - he rolls the 'r' in 'dReam' and 'suRprised'; it sounds very out-of-place and weird. "Was I suprrrrised when lightning struck!" It's a cool track that may take a few listens to enjoy. The random guitar solos are so random that I like 'em, even if they were more unexpected than the Spanish Inquisition.

Fallin' Love is another boring instrumental. I'm not sure if I'd rather listen to Magicant than this. Yeah, I'd go with Magicant, because Magicant has an atmosphere that I like. It may have no melody (at least, no likable melody), but it has atmosphere. This reminds me of some lazy version of EarthBound's Hospital Theme. I find it boring. Maybe there are some people who love Magicant and Fallin' Love (is it supposed to be Falling Love, or Fall in Love?), but I am not one of those people. Not even random guitar solos can save this song, or strings.

Eight Melodies is, thankfully, a great track. It's the third best track on here, being sung by a little boy's choir. The lyrics are 'meh', but since when have I admired this soundtrack for its lyrics? They're some of the better lyrics on here, anyway. The Eight Melodies + Strings is a great combo, and the boy trying to imitate a chipmunk even adds to the feel. It ends up sounding immense and amazing.

The World of Mother is a 16-minute track that tries to stuff a bunch of the game's music into one medley. It starts off with the ending of the Eight Melodies, then it has Pollyanna in all its 8-bit glory. Why not have some video game music to finish up a video game OST? It' just snippets of each song, though, with some of the tracks having weird additions (eight melodies later has this annoying whiny noise... in Dolby). You get the Hippie one as well, and some of the other songs of the soundtrack are on here. It's kinda nice, but there are some strange tracks on here. There's this part at like, 12:10 that sounds like a Pokemon song (and I'll probably end up talking about it in the Pokemon/ EarthBound Comparison). There are, in fact, many versions of the eight melodies - one with whiny noises, a really high pitched one, and one that was definitely not from the game. There's more than three, but you could just listen to the track yourself. I guess they really thought it was a great end to the album, and indeed it is.

At last, I was able to find an mp3 of the previously unreleased instrumental demo "Smiles and Tears". This piece is available on the 2004 release as a bonus track. It's a new version of the soundstone theme on EarthBound. Interestingly enough, although it's billed as a demo, the original album was released before EarthBound, where this song is first heard. This means that "Smiles and Tears" was either composed before EarthBound (maybe for the first Mother?) and was supposed to be on this album but didn't make the cut for some reason, or that this version was made after and perhaps intended to be be put on some other album (the Mother 2 soundtrack?) or perhaps in the game, but for whatever reason, didn't make the cut. It's a fantastic track, definitely worthy of the original. It's emotional and sad, especially if you think of the lyrics. The ending is reminiscent of "Strawberry Fields Forever" and a little out of place, but the rest of the track is more than enough to make up for a subpar ending.

What was the point of this outragously long review? Well, I like this album and the good tracks make up for the boring filler and instrumentals on here (Pollyanna is just a joy. It should have been a single.) Buy it off eBay, download it, just find a way to listen to this whole album and hear some of the great renderings of classic Earth Bound songs.