He Didn't Mention His Mother

This song finds Friedberger in a sweetly melancholy mood, ruefully recalling an oblique encounter and its lasting effects: I so wanted something to happen that day And then what I wanted, it happened And that just don't always happen that way to me Friedberger told The Guardian regarding the song: "That was just purely something that happened. I said it, I remembered it and... that's it. It has to be based in reality, otherwise it doesn't really mean anything to me."

The title doesn't appear in the song, but the question remains, why didn't the titular "he" mention his mother? And should the unnamed dude have done so? Eleanor Friedberger explained to Mojo: "I had met someone recently, and was thinking about our interactions. I know this sounds like I'm a crazy psycho or something (laughs), but I was writing down a list of things about this person that stuck out. And one was that he didn't mention his mother. Which was neither bad or good, it was just something I noticed. Because most people do. In fact, a lot of people I meet blame a lot of things on their mother."