A song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 Magical Mystery Tour LP
Written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. McCartney said he wrote it as a plea for generational understanding and respect for a mother's life experience. In the Magical Mystery Tour television film, the song serves as a big production number in the style of a 1930s Hollywood musical. Some commentators view the sequence as cultural satire, as the Beatles are seen dancing and dressed in white evening tails.
Paul McCartney began writing Your Mother Should Know on a harmonium at his house in St John's Wood, London, in the company of his Aunty Jin and Uncle Harry and drew on his father's love of music hall. The conversation he had with his family members that day inspired the subject matter of the song. Its lyrical premise centres on the history of hit songs across generations. McCartney took the title from a line in the 1961 film A Taste of Honey, which tells of a white teenage girl who falls pregnant with a black man's child and withholds news of the pregnancy from her domineering mother.
