The Songs of My Mother

The Songs of My Mother (Песни моей мамы) is a Russian album by the singer Vitas. It was released on the 3rd of April 2004. Together with the previous album Mama, the two albums were a tribute to his late mother. Songs from these albums featured heavily in the setlist of Vitas' extensive world tour The Songs of My Mother, performed at hundreds of venues in several countries from 2004-2006.

While Mama included several new songs written by Vitas, Songs of My Mother consists entirely of cover versions of popular older songs, described as "the gold reserves of Russian pop music", including the 1980 song, The Bird of Happiness, composed by Aleksandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov (from Yuri Ozerov's 1981 film O Sport, You - the world!), previously recorded by the vocal – instrumental ensemble Zdravstvuy, Pesnya, among others. The song The Bird of Happiness became from 1981 on forward the most successful in both Russia and China, and is still often performed by Vitas on stage. The song Chrysanthemums Have Faded was previously included on Vitas' Smile! album. All the other tracks were newly recorded for Songs of My Mother.

Vitas performed a piano-backed arrangement of Winter on a Russian New Year TV show in 2002.

Personnel

 * Sergey Pudovkin – production
 * Mikhail Dobrotvorskiy – management
 * Dmitriy Dobrotvorskiy – direction
 * Eduard Izmestyev – production, arrangement
 * Mikhail Grishin – engineering
 * Ilya Grebenyuk – keyboards
 * Aleksandr Gruzdev – guitar, saxophone
 * Rashit Kiyamov – bass guitar
 * Rushan Kharryasov – drums, percussion
 * Oboz Design Studio – sleeve design