The Songs of My Mother (Russian: Песни моей мамы) is an album by the singer Vitas. It was released on 3 April 2004. Together with the previous album Mama, the two albums were a tribute to his late mother. Songs from these albums featured heavily in the setlist of Vitas' extensive world tour The Songs of My Mother, performed at hundreds of venues in several countries between 2004 and 2006.
While Mama included several new songs written by Vitas, The Songs of My Mother consists entirely of cover versions of popular older songs, described as "the gold reserves of Russian pop music", including the 1980 song "The Bird of Happiness", composed by Aleksandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov (from Yuri Ozerov's 1981 film O Sport, You – the world!), previously recorded by the Vocal and Instrumental Ensemble Zdravstvuy, Pesnya, among others. The song The Bird of Happiness became from 1981 on forward the most successful in both Russia and China, and is still often performed by Vitas on stage. The song Chrysanthemums Have Faded was previously included on Vitas' Smile! album. All the other tracks were newly recorded for The Songs of My Mother.
Vitas performed a piano-backed arrangement of Winter on a Russian New Year TV show in 2002.
Personnel
Sergey Pudovkin – production
Mikhail Dobrotvorskiy – management
Dmitriy Dobrotvorskiy – direction
Eduard Izmestyev – production, arrangement
Mikhail Grishin – engineering
Ilya Grebenyuk – keyboards
Aleksandr Gruzdev – guitar, saxophone
Rashit Kiyamov – bass guitar
Rushan Kharryasov – drums, percussion
Oboz Design Studio – sleeve design