Songfacts®:

• This anthemic song tells the story of how vocalist Oli Sykes met his second wife, Alissa Salls.
  
  I didn't see it coming
  But I never really had much faith
  In the universe's magic
  Till it pulled us to that time and place
  
  A year after Oli Sykes had a public split from his first wife, tattoo artist Hannah Snowdon, the singer married Brazilian model Alissa Salls on July 22, 2017. The Amo album explores both the end of his first marriage and also the feeling of falling in love with Alissa. He described "Mother Tongue" to Beats 1's Zane Lowe as "probably the most gushing, out-there, just straight-up love song we've ever written."
• "Amo" is Portuguese for "I love" and the album title comes from this song.
  
  So don't say you love me; fala, "amo"
  Just let your heart speak up, and I'll know
  No amount of words could ever find a way to make sense of this
  So I wanna hear your mother tongue
  
  Sykes explained to Lowe that when he first met Alissa her English wasn't very fluent, though it was a lot better than his Portuguese. However, from the very start, they "had a really, really strong connection, and it was just a crazy time. And this song's just talking about those experiences."