Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
New stereo mix, applying AI extraction to the original stereo mix.
"Matilda Mother" is a song by the English rock band Pink Floyd, featured on their 1967 debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Written by Syd Barrett, it is sung mostly by Richard Wright with Barrett joining in on choruses and singing the whole last verse. It was the first song recorded for the album.
The lyrics quote fragments of fairy tales as read from a book to the singer by his mother ("read[ing] the scribbly black", referring to writing in a book as a child sees it), and in the chorus he implores her to "tell me more". "Matilda Mother" represents a common theme in Barrett's work: his nostalgia for childhood and awareness that it could not be regained.
Barrett originally wrote the song around verses from Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales, in which a series of naughty children, including Matilda, receive their (often gruesome) comeuppance. He was forced to rewrite and re-record the track when Belloc's estate unexpectedly denied permission to use these lyrics.
New stereo mix, applying AI extraction to the original stereo mix.
"Matilda Mother" is a song by the English rock band Pink Floyd, featured on their 1967 debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Written by Syd Barrett, it is sung mostly by Richard Wright with Barrett joining in on choruses and singing the whole last verse. It was the first song recorded for the album.
The lyrics quote fragments of fairy tales as read from a book to the singer by his mother ("read[ing] the scribbly black", referring to writing in a book as a child sees it), and in the chorus he implores her to "tell me more". "Matilda Mother" represents a common theme in Barrett's work: his nostalgia for childhood and awareness that it could not be regained.
Barrett originally wrote the song around verses from Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales, in which a series of naughty children, including Matilda, receive their (often gruesome) comeuppance. He was forced to rewrite and re-record the track when Belloc's estate unexpectedly denied permission to use these lyrics.
