In this post, part of a thread about country music, olivesmarch4th says:
This links to something I’d been idly thinking about for a while (idly because according to my search-fu I never did start that thread about it, so here it is), but my knowledge of music in English isn’t that wide, so maybe I’m wrong: there is a kind of song which is very common in Spanish, you can find it in any genre, but which seems to me to be much more genre-restricted in English. Again: I don’t listen to much rap, so maybe the reason I haven’t heard a rap song about this is my choice of artists, not the lack of such songs.
I’m talking about a specific kind of nostalgic songs: songs about a place you left behind. Not about your ex, or your childhood, or times gone by, but about places gone by.
They can be about wanting to go back home even if it’s to be buried (The Green Hills of Tyrol); about missing home (not the wife or the kids: Butterfly Kisses doesn’t count; If Dallas was in Tennesee does); about feeling like a fish out of water in this land which isn’t yours (Englishman in New York).
I ask you, oh Dopers: can you please supply me with more titles about this subject?
There are songs about missing home in general, and then there are nostalgic songs about a specific place (a town, state, or geographical area). Heck, there are even songs about missing the planet (“Rocket Man,” “Major Tom (Coming Home)”).
“Birmingham Blues”, by the Electric Light Orchestra. Songwriter Jeff Lynne is from Birmingham, England; the Birmingham Blues also happen to be the football team which Jeff supports.
Ellis Paul: Take Me Down
“I’m a one man line at the twenty-four hour store
I’m in a town that reminds me of my home town streets
I roamed the aisles a thousand miles from what I was looking for
A familiar face that would smile at me sweetly”
Jackson Browne: Looking Into You
“Well I looked into a house I once lived in
Around the time I first went on my own
When the roads were as many as the places I had dreamed of
And my friends and I were one
Now the distance is done and the search has begun
I’ve come to see where my beginnings have gone”
Bill Morrissey: Ice Fishing
"…
There ain’t much to leaving home
There ain’t much to ice fishing
Till you miss a day or more
And the hole you cut freezes over
And it’s like you have never been there before."
Home folks think I’m big in Detroit City
From the letters that I write they think I’m fine
But by day I make the cars,
By night I work the bars
If only they could read between the lines
I wanna go home…
also,
“Green green grass of home” - Curly Putman Jr, Porter Wagoner, Bobby Bear, et. al.
Dolly Parton did a concept album on this subject: My Tennessee Mountain Home. Some songs about the good parts of her childhood and some are about the bad but the overall feeling of the album is highly nostalgic and all about either missing home or missing it but being grateful to be gone.
“All I Can Do is Write About It” by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Well this life that I’ve lead has took me everywhere
There ain’t no place I ain’t never gone
But its kind of like the saying that you heard so many times
Well there just ain’t no place like home
Fiddle Peghead, when you’re quoting a song, please don’t use more than four or five lines. Quote a little and link to the rest. I shortened the excerpt in your post to fit with our copyright policy.
