First, as a follow-up to last week’s column of “Eurovision” favorites, an update: The final isn’t until noon on May 11, but of our top 10, only eight countries are still in it. Iceland and San Marino won’t be there. San Marino was easily my second-favorite, but its performance was nowhere near as good as the recorded version. Eight out of 10 may sound good, but only 29.7 percent of entries don’t make the finals. Anyway, enough about the past.

It’s on to the future! Tomorrow is Mother’s Day (heads up if you didn’t buy the moms in your life, you slacker). Before, I’ve let my mom choose the songs and I’ve talked about celebrities’ moms, but this year I’m going in a different direction.

Here are five of the least appropriate songs for Mother’s Day.

The Rolling Stones — “Mother’s Little Helper”

This is a really, famously good song. But I bet you’ve never listened to the lyrics: “‘Kids are different today’/ I hear every mother say/ Mother needs something today/ To calm her down/ And though she’s not really ill/ There’s a little yellow pill.”

That’s right, it’s about a mother abusing prescription painkillers! It’s really, really explicitly about that. It’s actually even more depressing! Here’s the final chorus: “No more running for the shelter/ Of a mother’s little helper/ They just helped you on your way/ Through your busy, dying day.”

Yep. Mother dies of an overdose. Happy Mother’s Day!

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Eminem — “My Mom”

For the first chunk of his career, all Eminem’s songs were either about how much he hated his mom, how much he hated his first and second wife, Kim (who are, of course, the same person), and how hard he had it as a kid. He apparently had a narrow scope of experience.

I famously don’t like Eminem. He’s like a less creative MC Chris.

This one is notable, though, because it actually got him sued. By his mom! She insisted nearly all of it wasn’t true and settled… for a reported $1,600. Savage. He had previously been sued by Kim for rapping about her suicide attempt, after their first but before their second marriage. Just amazing.

Pink Floyd — “Mother”

Roger Waters wrote this one for the fictional Pink from its… movie, I guess, “The Wall.” But since Pink was mostly based on Waters, this was presumably about his mom. That sure is a lot.

I hate to overdo lyric-quoting, but an informal poll of people who returned my texts while I was writing this indicated this song is slow and boring and nobody was listening. So here’s the chorus:

“Hush now, baby, baby, don’t you cry/ Mama’s gonna make all of your nightmares come true/ Mama’s gonna put all of her fears into you/ Mama’s gonna keep you right here, under her wing/ She won’t let you fly, but she might let you sing/ Mama’s gonna keep baby cosy and warm.”

Eesh.

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The Police — “Mother”

Look, this is not a good song. It’s abrasive, discordant and just basically hard to listen to. It’s like a weird art rock band people only pretend to like in college. The vocals sound like the drumming on Metallica’s St. Anger.

All the songs so far are either about bad mothers or have bad things happening to mothers, but at their core they’re good songs. The subject matter begins and ends with the lyrics.

This one, though? There’s a lot going on here. Is it about women Sting dated nagging him and calling all the time like his mother? Is it about how he saw women he dated as his mother? Is it about how his mother ruined women as a concept for him? All of those things? I don’t know and I don’t want to ask. If it inspired the band behind “Roxanne” to sound like a cracked funhouse mirror, I’d rather just leave it alone.

Disturbed — “Down With the Sickness”

Ooh wah-aah-aah-aah!

I will absolutely and unashamedly admit I loved this song when it came out in 2000. I had just graduated from high school, I wore black clothes almost exclusively, and this was my jam. I still love it now. I also very much love Disturbed. The band’s covers are the stuff of legends; I may like their version of “The Sound of Silence” more than the original! David Draiman has an all-time voice.

All that said, the bridge of the song belongs in this column. It’s so profane that the whole thing is cut from the music video, which is the first thing I embedded. Then I found this version, but it’s censored, which means half the words are cut out. All the uncensored versions are random users who’ll probably get DMCA’ed soon. So… I don’t know, look it up on Tidal for the whole thing. But this gives you an idea.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and send column ideas to him at @bayareadata.press on BlueSky.