[3] The main Cope collaborators on the album include keyboard player and string arranger Thighpaulsandra, drummer Rooster Cosby and guitarist Michael "Moon-Eye" Watts in place of multi-instrumentalist Donald Ross Skinner, who only contributes omnichord on a few tracks.

In 2003 Aural Innovations magazine retrospectively called 20 Mothers "the most eclectic and varied album" in Cope's discography and added that it was "a remarkably strong if somewhat unfocussed effort".

[1] Cope continues to pursue many of the same themes as he had on his albums since Peggy Suicide: Mother Earth on "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", described by Cope as "a pagan love song about screwing the Mother Earth in her divine maiden form"; religion on "1995", which challenges the “ignorance of the standard Judeo-Christian One God way of thinking”; megalithic monuments on "Stone Circles ’n’ You"; and "the automobile defined landscape" in "Adam and Eve Hit the Road".

“It’s not worth the risk.” "Try Try Try" is about Cope’s mother, who, he laments, “has never seen me play live, never heard my records, didn’t read my book, wouldn’t even eat the jam I made with the plums from the tree in my garden.

[1] All tracks are written by Julian Cope, except where notedThe album includes a booklet with descriptions of the music and a number of poems: Technical