Mother Knows Best (song) own gains. Falco continued, "The audience knows what Gothel wants with Rapunzel, but the fact that we are unable to protect the naïve princess results in further hatred for the witch." Falco also concluded that Gothel's "sinister reprise at the end of "Tangled" allows for these horrifying undertones to emerge, which makes 'Mother Knows Best' one of the most sinister villain songs in the Disney library." Similarly, Elissa Smith of Paper Droids wrote that while the audience is fully aware of Gothel's evil intentions, Rapunzel is denied "the outsider's point of view." Glen Chapman of Den of Geek wrote that
Mother Knows Best (song) work" while "Frollo is a much more sophisticated villain, but easier to understand ... than Mother Gothel", whose relationship with Rapunzel is more manipulative than the Frollo-Quasimodo dynamic. While writing "Mother Knows Best", Menken was briefly concerned that "there [would] be a rash of children trying to kill their parents after they’ve seen the movie." According to directors Byron Howard and Nathan Greno, one of the song's lines, "getting kind of chubby", was lifted from an interview the directors had held with several female Disney employees, in which they asked them to describe their relationships with their mothers. Menken was