Songfacts®:

• Charlie Puth is not the nice, well-mannered guy his girlfriend's mom thinks he is. She's told her daughter the singer is "better than the last one you brought around." However, once Charlie and his love interest are free from her mom's company, they get up to all sorts of mischief.
  
  If your mother knew all the things we do
  If your mother knew, she'd keep me so far from you
  
  Charlie just pretends to be a decent upstanding guy when around his girlfriend's mom.
• Puth croons the song from the perspective of a teenager. According to the singer, "'Mother' is about the high school experience I never had."
• This summery song with an '80s-inspired beat was co-penned and co-produced by Puth with Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, frequent Post Malone collaborator Louis Bell, and Camila Cabello co-writer Andrew Watt. Puth told Radio.com: "It's just supposed to be like a fun, carefree, everything is so serious in the world why not take a like a three minute break kind of thing."
• Red Hot Chili Peppers stickman Chad Smith contributed drums to the song - he and Puth previously worked together on an Ozzy Osbourne album. Smith came on board when Puth played him "Mother." "I can add something to this," Smith told him.
• The first verse is, according to Puth, lyrically truthful.
  
  He's so much better than the last one you brought around
  Please and thank you, everything matters
  I'm gonna make sure that she knows I'm the best she's found
  
  The singer told Genius: "I'm always super polite when I first meet people. I could be having the worst day ever and I'll still be totally attentive towards them."