Child Of Mine

Album: Patterns in Repeat (2024)
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Songfacts®:

  • Laura Marling gave birth to her first child, a daughter, in early 2023. "Child Of Mine" is a gentle song capturing the strange and marvelous mix of wonder and vulnerability that comes with the mother-child bond. Marling sings softly to her little girl, vowing to protect and guide her, all while savoring the precious time she has before the inevitable rush of growing up.
  • "Child Of Mine" is the opening track from Laura Marling's eighth album, Patterns in Repeat. The lullaby was the initial spark that led to the creation of the album. She explained: "I wrote it whilst bouncing my daughter in her bouncer when she was four weeks old. I hadn't sat down to write. It'd been a while since I'd picked up the guitar, just to pass the time, so maybe that did the trick. I wrote the lullaby soon after and thought 'OK, maybe I could make a record this year.'"
  • The album's themes of motherhood, family, and generational patterns are deeply rooted in Marling's experience as a new mother. "Child of Mine" served as a starting point for the album's exploration of parenthood and familial connections. Marling said of the album:

    "Over the course of nine months, I had happily prepared myself for the fact that my life as a songwriter would be put on hold while I adjusted to life as a new parent. How delighted then was I to discover that for the first few months of a baby's life, you can bounce them in a bouncer and play guitar all day. For the first time in my life, I was able to gaze into another human's eyes as I wrote."

    As Marling bounced her newborn and strummed her guitar, a whole new world of creativity opened up to her. She began to see the world through a mother's eyes, and the result is a testament to the power of human connection, the enduring nature of family bonds, and the extraordinary beauty of the ordinary.
  • Marling co-produced "Child Of Mine" with her longtime engineer and mixer Dom Monks.

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