Premiere: “Mom Was Wrong” About The Shabs’ Latest Music Video!

Everyone (well, most people) loves their mom, but let’s be honest, mom is often far from perfect. We don’t like to admit it because mom is supposed to be the be-all, end-all, but moms, just like anyone, are prone to believing in some stupid shit that later in life doesn’t sit well with you.

The Shabs bring a constructive, objective, yet respectful voice to the table with the issue of one’s relationship with their mother with their new single “Mom Was Wrong.” The duo has also opened the vaults to rediscover lots of old, often embarrassing, family home videos that fit perfectly within the context and the tenor of the song. This is the first sampling of new music to come from The Shabs’ upcoming third record Half Dead (Mongrel Records), which the guys spent most of the COVID pandemic putting together.

Commenting on the song, singer and guitarist Jon Shaban share with us: “‘Mom Was Wrong’ is a song about growing up in a fairly ‘conservative’ household and not necessarily agreeing with everything but also understanding our parents always had the best intentions for us. Ryan and I had pretty similar upbringings, and I think that really comes across in our new video, which is made up of old family VHS footage that we converted to digital files and used to make this video.

“‘Mom Was Wrong’ is a song about growing up in a fairly ‘conservative’ household and not necessarily agreeing with everything but also understanding our parents always had the best intentions for us.”

“The song itself is a great representation of a new direction our music is going in after we wrote and recorded a new album in the depths of COVID. Keep an eye on our pages for release details on the rest of the material. Thanks so much to V13 for the feature!”

Bassist Ryan McArthur ads his two cents, noting, “We both grew up with religious mothers who sometimes made us do things that we didn’t understand or agree with, and often judged the alternative choices that we made. At the same time, though, we both love our moms, and they have always been there for us no matter what. So ‘Mom Was Wrong’ is essentially about being able to love someone close to you but also being honest with them about how their beliefs have affected you.

“So ‘Mom Was Wrong’ is essentially about being able to love someone close to you but also being honest with them about how their beliefs have affected you.”

“So for the music video, we decided to dig up all of our old home videos, which were mostly filmed by our moms, and juxtapose the fun, carefree childhoods we had against some of the weird religious things that we were made to do as kids. We also echoed this dissonance in the glitchy, stuttery typography of the song’s lyrics.”

In their decade together, The Shabs have become one of the most beloved and well-liked South African rock acts. It’s taken a lot of effort and a punk rock work ethic to get here, but McArthur and Shaban are picking up where they left off in early 2020 when they had to cancel most of their European tour because of the onset of the COVID pandemic. Now it’s back to business with the band set to release their first new album since 2019’s Can You Hear Us At The Back. If crowd pleasing anthems are your cup of tea, then you will be quite content to have The Shabs back doing what they do best.

Artwork for the single “Mom Was Wrong” by The Shabs