You Are Your Mother's Child

Album: Upside Down Mountain (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • Oberst adopts on this song the perspective of a contrite father, proud of his child's accomplishments despite his own shortcomings as a dad. "I definitely struggled with whether to put that one on the record," Oberst told Billboard magazine. "It has more sentimentality to it than any of the other songs, but I've seen a lot of friends go through that stuff. [Having kids] would be a cool thing to do someday. I don't particularly feel ready for it right now, but I guess no one ever does."
  • The song's music video was filmed on Fire Island, which is the 32-mile-long island that stretches south of New York's Long Island. Popular with the gay community, The Village People paid tribute to the location on their 1977 song "Fire Island."

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