Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Mother's Little Helper" was recorded at the RCA Records studios in Hollywood, California, in March 1966. According to the music historian Nicholas Schaffner, Jagger demonstrates "his crudest irony" on ""Aftermath"s most overt 'drug song'" … at a time when the adult media were beginning to rant about teenage drug abuse". Schaffner goes on to say "the Stones retaliated by zeroing in on all those harried middle-aged housewives incapable of getting through the day, or getting to sleep at night, without the help of their legally prescribed 'little yellow pills.'"