Songfacts®:

• A bizarre track from The Police's fifth and final studio album, "Mother" was written and sung by the group's guitarist, Andy Summers. In his Songfacts interview, Summers explained that the song was inspired by his mom. "We all have our family situations, and I had a pretty intense mother who was very focused on me," he said. "I was sort of the 'golden child,' and there I was, sort of fulfilling all of her dreams by being this pop star in The Police. I got a certain amount of pressure from her."
• By the time Synchronicity was released, Sting had an outsized influence on the group and near-total control over which songs they recorded. He wrote every song on the album except for this one, "Murder By Numbers" (co-written with Andy Summers) and "Miss Gradenko," which was written by their drummer, Stewart Copeland.
  
  "Mother" won over Sting, and the song provided a quirky contrast to the other tracks on the set. "It was so bizarre and weird compared to everything else, that people really liked it," Summers told us.