Maman A Tort - Lyrics and Music

Lyrics and Music

The song is constructed like a nursery rhyme in which a young girl, while numbering facts between 1 and 8, confesses her love for a female nurse. As written on the cover, the song is dedicated to the actress Frances Farmer, as well as King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Farmer explained at the time that the song was not autobiographical.

"Maman a tort" lays the foundation of Farmer's musical universe, including many themes dealt with by the singer in subsequent releases. Among the topics discussed are transgression, love, the world of childhood, violence and death, mortality and suffering, sexuality, and social demands. The song also deals with psychoanalysis. The rhythm is catchy, and the lyrics, "dark and symbolic", describe the conflicts between a daughter and her mother, as the title suggests. According to an analysis published by Sophie Khairallah, the lyrics could also refer to incest. They seem to be "innocent" and are sung "in the most ingenuous way". Biographer Bernard Violet considers the song "a nursery rhyme with enigmatic but quite spicy lyrics which place it rather far from Sabine Paturel and her innocent song "Les Bêtises"". Journalist Caroline Bee deemed the song as "a small efficient UFO, with a catchy and binary melody and a disconcerting video".

In a 1984 interview Farmer discussed the song's lyrics, stating: "It can happen to many children who are in hospital the nurses feed these children, tuck them into bed, kiss them before they sleep and therefore take the place of their mothers. So it is a little girl who tells her mother: I love the nurse". She said in another interview: "But if people prefer to give this song a perverse sense, it is their problem". Thus, she does not confirm the lesbian allusions that seem to emerge from the chorus (the French verb "aimer" can mean either "to love" or "to like"). However, the song has been listed in several books dealing with homosexuality and explains the fact that many gay people were immediately attracted to Farmer's world.