Mother Goose

"Mother Goose" is a song by the British progressive rock band Jethro Tull. It is the fourth track from their album Aqualung which was released in 1971. Background "Mother Goose" was written by Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson. Anderson, who recalled writing the song in the summer of 1970, singled out the song as one of the earliest written for the band's 1971 album, Aqualung. He also noted the song as being somewhat atypical of his writing style, commenting, "I tend to be more in social realism, in terms of subject matter, but I do stretch to the more whimsical, surreal songs like 'Mother Goose'." Anderson, who has also called the song a "surrealistic pastiche with summery motives", views the song as an expression of visual art: Lyrics and styles The lyrics are a pastiche of surreal figures based on images that Ian Anderson wrote with the same abstract ideas as "Cross-Eyed Mary". The song is mostly acoustic, like "Cheap Day Return" or "Slipstream". Rolling Stone magazine has put it as "Elizabethan madrigal" musical style. Anderson would return to the Mother Goose character on Jethro Tull's 1973 album A Passion Play. Release "Mother Goose" was first released on the band's 1971 studio album Aqualung.