Publication : The Indie Grid (TIG)
Date : 21 September 2026
Long before the arrival of MOTHERS, Ute Lemper had built a career in which entertainment, history and political conscience repeatedly crossed paths. Her new 17-language peace project places that history firmly in the present, using one original composition to consider war, equality, women’s rights and the future facing children around the world.
Lemper’s relationship with politically engaged art can be traced back to Münster, Germany, where she encountered Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill as a teenager in the late 1970s. Brecht’s treatment of injustice, political failure and human weakness left a lasting impression. Lemper would later become one of the internationally recognized interpreters of both Brecht and Weill, carrying the work of Weimar Germany into a career spanning concert halls, Broadway, the West End and recording studios.
That history matters when approaching MOTHERS. The project, released September 21 for the International Day of Peace, does not arrive as an isolated change of direction. Instead, it continues a line of inquiry that has surfaced repeatedly throughout Lemper’s four decades as a singer, actress, composer and recording artist.
Her past projects offer clear precedents. Songs for Eternity drew upon music written by Jewish prisoners in ghettos and concentration camps during the Holocaust. Rendezvous with Marlene emerged partly from Lemper’s three-hour telephone conversation with Marlene Dietrich and incorporated Dietrich’s history of opposition to Nazi Germany. Across these different works, memory frequently becomes a route toward examining the present.
MOTHERS shifts that perspective toward a contemporary international landscape. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, alongside widening geopolitical division, provided part of the context for Lemper’s decision to revisit a song she had first written years earlier. Its current lyrics move from motherhood and protection toward freedom, dignity, equality and human rights.
The decision to record the composition in 17 languages expands those ideas beyond one national frame. Versions appear in English, Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, Farsi, Kurdish, French, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Swahili. Across them, Lemper preserves the same underlying song while adapting its musical setting to different cultural traditions.
That balance between continuity and variation becomes one of the project’s most interesting formal ideas. AI-assisted production helped Lemper investigate arrangements drawing on sounds associated with American soul and R&B, Brazil, the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe. The original composition, melodic writing, structure and instrumental foundation remain Lemper’s own.
The “MOTHERS” video carries the same relationship between art and public life into its imagery. Footage from protests and demonstrations appears beside more hopeful scenes, allowing the song’s idealism to coexist with evidence of the conflict and political frustration surrounding its creation.
There is also an earlier, quieter origin behind the project. Lemper first wrote “MOTHERS” for a European television series she hosted about motherhood, built around conversations with women working as athletes, doctors, politicians and in other professions. The song was not ultimately used in the show, but Lemper kept it until circumstances prompted a return.
That long gestation gives MOTHERS an unusual place in Lemper’s catalogue. A composition born from interviews about motherhood has become a multilingual statement connected to themes that have followed her since her first encounters with Brecht and Weill. The political landscape has changed repeatedly across those decades, while the question underneath much of Lemper’s work has remained remarkably consistent: what role can art occupy when history and human vulnerability collide?
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