Mother Knows Best (song) Mother Knows Best (song) "Mother Knows Best" is a song written by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater for Walt Disney Pictures' 50th animated feature film "Tangled" (2010). Included on the film's official soundtrack, "Mother Knows Best" is a musical theatre-inspired pop and jazz ballad performed by American actress and singer Donna Murphy in her animated role as Mother Gothel, the film's villain. Incorporating a series of passive-aggressive insults into its lyrics, the song serves as Gothel's attempt to frighten Rapunzel into remaining in their secluded tower despite her constant requests to see the floating lanterns so that she
Mother Gothel idea in "Cinderella "... She proves it's possible to "be" evil without all the theatrics." The author continued, "Gothel is one for the ages with a bit of darkly comedic timing and the overall greed and menace a villain needs to be disdained." The character has received comparisons to the Evil Queen, Snow White's stepmother, from Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs "(1937). Donna Murphy believed that Gothel did really love Rapunzel in her own way. Mother Gothel performs two of the film's songs: "Mother Knows Best," described as a "brassy, Broadway-targeted tune" and an "authoritarian anthem" in which