Music of The Earth Bound Series - Mother

Mother (マザー, Mazā?), sometimes referred to as "EarthBound Zero", is a role-playing video game published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System video game console in 1989. The game's soundtrack was composed by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka. Tanaka was a video game composer working for Nintendo who had previously composed for games such as Super Mario Land and Metroid, while Suzuki was a composer and musician for bands of many different genres. The NES was only able to play three notes at a time, which Suzuki has noted greatly limited what he was able to produce, as he could not create some of the sounds he wanted. Melodies and themes from some pieces from the soundtrack were reused in the other games in the series. ("Pollyanna", "Snowman", and "Eight Melodies" make an appearance in all three games.)

Some of the music from the game was released as a soundtrack album, Mother, by CBS/Sony on August 21, 1989. It consists of eleven tracks, seven of which are English vocal arrangements of songs from the game created by Suzuki, David Bedford, Takeshi Saitoh, and Michael Nyman. The lyrics to these arrangements were written by Linda Hennrick, and each one was performed by a different artist or group such as Catherine Warwick and St Paul's Cathedral Choir. The album cover shows the word "MOTHER" in a shade of brown over a red background; the letter "O" of "MOTHER" is replaced by an image of planet Earth, also with a brownish tinge. The soundtrack was reissued on February 18, 2004 by Sony Music Direct with its tracks digitally remastered, a song from Earthbound entitled "Smile and Tears" was added, and the track "The World of Mother" was replaced with a version that is six minutes longer.

Reviewer Patrick Gann of RPGFan received the album well, saying that he enjoyed the variety of genres presented in it, though he noted that the lyrics were "trite and cheesy", though still "catchy". He also applauded the production value, calling it "incredible, especially for 1989". Square Enix Music Online, in their review of the album, called it "a happy little gem with quirks and surprises". Though unlike RPGFan they felt that the sound production quality was not as good as it could be, they still felt that the pieces had "stood the test of time in terms of good music".