New Jersey-born and Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Sarah Hollins is no stranger to telling hard truths through even harder songs — and with her new single Mother, dropping just in time for the US Mother’s Day Weekend 2025, she has crafted her most uncompromising and timely release to date. Produced by Erik Kertes (Michael Bublé, Shakira, Jewel, Melissa Etheridge), the track is a snarling, defiant ode to the kind of feminine rage that rarely gets the sonic space it deserves.
Sarah Hollins
Inspired by the raw, gritty energy of ’90s alternative rock and Hollins’ lifelong obsession with technical guitar-driven bands like Coheed and Cambria, Mother explodes with distorted guitars, dynamic shifts, and razor-sharp lyrics that call out patriarchal control, religious trauma, and the cost of silence. It’s angry, smart, melodic — and absolutely unrelenting.
“There’s free will and then there’s me / Inevitably, Mother,” Hollins sings, her voice soaked in sarcasm and sorrow. The line sums up the song’s central paradox: the illusion of choice in a world that polices women’s autonomy at every level — from the political to the physical to the deeply personal.
Lyrically, she doesn’t hold back. “If you’d move, I’d have room to loosen my hips, widen my thighs,” she spits, throwing a middle finger at centuries of gendered repression. “I never even bit it / Take your apple and stick it / Hey baby open wide, swallow and smile.” These lines bite with biblical imagery and brutal honesty, weaponising language to push back against the narratives women are taught to accept.
The track itself started with a rhythmic acoustic part written by Hollins, later layered and distorted in the studio with Kertes. But it’s the addition of metal guitarist AJ Minette that gives Mother its cutting teeth — a swirling, intense interplay of guitars that builds a foundation for Hollins’ fury to fully ignite. The result is a track that feels raw but carefully constructed, emotional but musically precise — echoing her mission to bring complexity and intentionality back to a landscape where many songs lean toward simplicity.
Sarah Hollins
This single marks the latest evolution in Hollins’ genre-fluid career. A self-described “librarian by day, indie rocker by night,” she’s previously explored everything from folk to emo to pop-punk, all through the lens of deeply personal storytelling. Her 2022 debut album Catholic Guilt and 2023’s Sad Dad Rock EP dug into themes of queerness, religious indoctrination, and healing — always with a sharp ear for melody and emotional resonance. Collaborations with artists like Semler further cemented her place among a new wave of alt artists unafraid to blur the lines between sacred and profane, soft and scathing.
With Mother, Hollins steps into a heavier, more assertive space — one that’s as musically compelling as it is thematically urgent. In a political moment where women are still being criminalized for miscarriages and stripped of reproductive rights, the track reads as both protest and purging. It’s not just a song — it’s a scream, a sermon, and a reclamation.
If this is a sign of what Hollins has in store for 2025, consider the message received: this mother doesn’t play nice.
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