The Ricky B. Top 5

Like I told Adam the other day, I didn’t grow up suckling on my mother’s musical teat like some of you guys so these are all songs that I’ve loved since high school or later. Ironically all of these songs are about a man’s love for his mother.


It’s Your Thing – The Isley Brothers



This song is about the many Isley Brothers and how much they all love their shared mother. They love mum so much that they declare that they have no right to tell her whom she can or cannot “sock it to” (whatever that means). Presumably the boys mean that only she, their highly revered mother, has the right to chose whose feet she dresses with socks.

Let's Spend the Night Together – The Rolling Stones



What nice little boys, those Rolling Stones. It’s admiring how much they just want to spend some more time with their mums. In this lovely little number, they urge their mothers to come over to their homes and have a sleepover party. Any good boys will be sure to have plenty of tea and biscuits ready for their hungry mums.

This Time Tomorrow – The Kinks



This one’s a bit depressing, but The Kinks are realists. They imagine a world (a very real one at that) in which their mothers may some day pass on. Two brothers ponder what life will be like without their dear mother, and they realize that life will be sad. Very sad, indeed.

I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend – The Ramones



Now here are nice young men who know the true value of a good mother. They admire and respect their mothers so much that they profess to wish that all young women were just like their own mothers. They plead “do you love me, babe?” because they know that the perfect women will love them just as much as their mothers do.

Don’t Worry Baby – The Beach Boys



These young fellows prove that in order to make a great song, you need to be in a band with you brothers and your band name needs to start with “The”. Don’t worry baby is a very touching yet sad song because The Beach Boys had no mother. She was poisoned by some rancid meat and died when the boys were just three (all of The Beach Boys are twins, or quintuples or what have you). This song imagines what would life had been like if she hadn’t been tragically killed, a sweat counterpoint to This Time Tomorrow.


I truly do love these songs, but I left one out that I love more than all of them because I didn’t want to (further) insult a good friend. However, one of my all time favorite songs is Chris Myers’ My Drug Addiction. I thought about including a full review of the song, but I think I’ll save that for a full album review later on.