Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/9-iconic-musicians-who-never-knew-their-mothers-and-how-it-shaped-every-song-they-wrote/
There’s a quiet thread running through the history of popular music that doesn’t always get named directly: some of the most emotionally powerful songs ever written came from people who grew up with a mother-shaped hole in the center of their world. Absence, whether through death, abandonment, or distance, has a way of pressing itself into creative work. It becomes a compass point that artists keep returning to, consciously or not.
The nine musicians gathered here each experienced that absence in different ways. Some lost their mothers suddenly; others were surrendered to relatives and grew up in the complicated space between presence and absence. All of them turned that wound into art that outlasted them or continues to define them.
1. John Lennon
John Lennon was raised by his aunt Mimi Smith from the age of five, after his parents Julia and Alfred Lennon separated. Julia, who was described as high-spirited and musical, taught her son John how to play the banjo and the ukulele – a bond of warmth that made what followed all the more devastating. Later in life, John remarked that he had lost his mother twice: once at five, when he was sent to live with his aunt, and once at seventeen when she died.
An off-duty policeman struck Julia in the street in 1958, killing her instantly. Julia’s death traumatised John, and it also served to draw him closer to McCartney, who had also lost his mother at an early age. Songs such…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-06-30 10:05:00
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