Mother Knows Best (song) songs. While the majority of "Tangled"'s music was inspired by the work of Canadian musician Joni Mitchell, Menken envisioned Gothel's song as "classic" Broadway. Before writing "Mother Knows Best", Menken and Slater researched appropriate moments in the film during which its main characters could potentially perform, ultimately determining that "Mother Knows Best" "flows directly out of the conflict between" Mother Gothel and Rapunzel. Menken observed similarities between Gothel and Claude Frollo, another Disney villain for whom he had written songs while working as a composer on "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1996). Menken described Gothel as "a scary piece of
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