He first offered it as the Beatles' contribution to the Our World satellite broadcast in June 1967, but the band favoured John Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" for its social significance.

Paul McCartney began writing "Your Mother Should Know" on a harmonium at his house in St John's Wood, London, in the company of his Aunty Jin and Uncle Harry,[5] and drew on his father's love of music hall.

[8] McCartney took the title from a line in the 1961 film A Taste of Honey,[6] which tells of a white teenage girl who falls pregnant with a black man's child and withholds news of the pregnancy from her domineering mother.

[12] McCartney first offered "Your Mother Should Know" as the Beatles' contribution to the Our World satellite broadcast in June,[13] but the band favoured Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" for its social significance.

[6] The song's rhythm suggests a foxtrot, a quality it shares with "Catcall" (formerly titled "Catwalk"),[9] a McCartney-written instrumental recorded by Chris Barber's trad jazz band in July 1967.

[27] The overdubs included backing vocals by Lennon, McCartney and Harrison,[28] which, according to music critic Tim Riley, give the performance a "parodic irreverence".

[29][30] Following Epstein's death on 27 August, the Beatles committed to making Magical Mystery Tour[31] because as McCartney insisted the band needed to focus on a new creative project.

He cites the entrance of the young RAF cadets, amid the throng of formally dressed dancers, as an example of the scene having "a satirical undercurrent and [addressing] the fissures of late 1960s politics".

[23] Film-maker Anthony Wall, commenting on the 2012 DVD reissue of Magical Mystery Tour, also recognised the sequence as a subtle satire of British culture.

[60] The BBC scheduled Magical Mystery Tour for prime-time viewing during the Christmas holiday season, during which regular programming usually consisted of family sitcoms and variety shows.

[67][68] According to author Barry Miles, Magical Mystery Tour baffled the British public because "many viewers were assuming that the show would be the kind of song-and-dance spectacular that the closing 'Your Mother Should Know' sequence satirised.

"[61] Peter Brown, an executive at Epstein's company NEMS, was critical of the project's disorganisation and McCartney's extravagance when filming his "top hat and cane dance number" and the segment for "The Fool on the Hill".

"[69][nb 5] Bob Dawbarn of Melody Maker described the Magical Mystery Tour EP as "six tracks which no other pop group in the world could begin to approach for originality combined with the popular touch".

It's a hazy, stoned kind of sensation which reminds you of hearing old tunes, in smoky rooms ..."[73] Among reviews of the American LP, Richard Goldstein of The New York Times complained that the new songs furthered the "electronic posturing" of Sgt.

He said that "Magical Mystery Tour" and "its nostalgic refrain, 'Your Mother Should Know'" were "motifs disguised as songs", adding: "Both declare their moods (in stock musical phrases) but neither succeeds in establishing them.

"[74] Writing in Esquire, Robert Christgau considered three of the soundtrack songs to be "disappointing", particularly "The Fool on the Hill", but cited the "tender camp of 'Your Mother Should Know'" as one of the reasons to buy the album.

[77] He said that although the harmonic ideas are "bright and clever", the instrumental bridges interrupt rather than complement the verses, and the inclusion of the "da-da-da" singalong "make[s] it sound like a demo with dummy lyrics".

[9] In 1989, "Weird Al" Yankovic parodied the Magical Mystery Tour dance sequence in his music video for the title track of his album UHF – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and Other Stuff.

[34] The arrangement includes McCartney playing harmonium, rather than piano, and what music critic Richie Unterberger calls "the peculiar use of stilted, martial drumming" by Starr.