We can give you a lot of quotes about home. But one of the best would be, “A home is where the heart is.”
That said, it not only pertains to the physical structure where a family lives. Home is also the place in your heart that houses your love for your family and where dreams and happiness can be found.
If you’re looking for songs about being homeward-bound, we’re here to help. Read on to find out more about 21 of the best songs about coming home.
1. “Take Me Home, Country Roads” By John Denver
John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” has always been a popular track However, it has shot to massive popularity in recent years. Thanks to being used in the trailer for the online game Fallout 76, the song greeted a new generation of people who enjoyed the song.
Here, the singer longs to return to his home in West Virginia, thinking about all that awaits him. Its soaring chorus, “Country roads, take me home to the place I belong,” makes you feel sentimental about your own home.
With beautiful depictions of nature, he reflects on the family and loved ones waiting for him. It’s a gorgeous track that would make anyone want to head to the Blue Ridge mountains.
2. “Comin’ Home” By City And Colour
Life on tour and traveling can leave one longing for home and the people they’ve left behind. But what about when you’re traveling the world and your mind just can’t leave your last destination? In “Comin’ Home,” City and Colour reflect on all of the places he’s been.
A song with “coming home” in the title shows that travel has become routine for him. He never bothers taking any pictures or souvenirs because he knows his next visit is soon.
Instead, his mind is focused on troubles with his lover back home. He’d rather wake up next to her than see the sights he’s listed off. In the end, he wonders if she’ll pick his heart over another and resolves to head home.
3. “Home In A Boxcar” By Hoots & Hellmouth
Is home always one place? For Hoots & Hellmouth in “Home in a Boxcar,” it’s difficult to say.
In the starting verse, the speaker reflects on a photograph of himself and some friends. At the same time, he remembers sitting in a train boxcar as he stows away elsewhere. Celebrating his escape from the long arm of the law and the call of home, he seems happy to have chosen his path.
As the chorus comes, a sense of ennui slips into the traveler’s mind. Growing roots in strange towns as he passes through, he thinks about how to get back home. Stating that he can get home anytime, if only in a dream, he continues the celebration of his new home on the road.
4. “Lights” By Journey
It turns out Dallas Green isn’t the only person struggling with personal connections while on tour. Journey’s famous track, “Lights,” highlights a similar issue.
Here, the singer’s love is directed to his home city of San Francisco. He is away from home and is reminded of it “when the lights go down in the city.” When he’s lonely, he misses his city by the bay.
Lyrically, the song is exceptionally simple. Much of the vocalization is crooning and harmonizing, but what you can find lyrically will leave anyone yearning for their home city.
5. “You’re My Home” By Billy Joel
Home doesn’t have to be a physical place. In Billy Joel’s “You’re My Home,” his idea of home is the person that he loves.
In the lyrics, we discover how the singer never had a place to call his home. That is not surprising since he claims he has a “crazy gypsy” in his soul. But this is fine by him because his lover is his true home.
The short, sweet song highlights how much a personal connection matters to replace home as a place. The singer states that he’ll never be alone so long as he has his home – her – with him.
6. “Young Love” By Coheed And Cambria
When you see Coheed and Cambria on lists with this theme, it’s usually their hit song “Welcome Home.” But then again, such a track isn’t about home at all. Instead, Coheed has a plethora of songs about truly coming home. One of the best and most heart-wrenching is “Young Love.”
This song focuses not on a pair of lovers but on a home. Reflecting on a home lovingly referred to as the Big Beige, frontman Claudio Sanchez sings about how he and his wife rented the home out when they moved away. The new tenants turned it into a drug den, further damaged in a raid by law enforcement.
Apologizing to the house for leaving it in the wrong hands, the singer personifies the house as his true home. It’s a heartwrenching but beautiful song about how much a home can truly mean.
7. “Ocean Song” By Daughters
Coming home isn’t always the best thing for one’s mental health. While most of our songs are feel-good, we’d be remiss not to include an outlier. Noise-rock band Daughters shows what monotony can do to a person in “Ocean Song.”
This track is partially about mental health. Here, we follow a man named Paul returning to his dreary, boring home. Seeing the cracked bush beds and broken garage door, he reflects on how much work he has ahead of him.
From the lyrics, we can tell that what upsets Paul is not just the things around him. It’s something that comes from within him. As he is about to enter his house, something in him snaps and he chooses to run.
8. “Sweet Home Alabama” By Lynyrd Skynyrd
One of the most classic songs of the South is Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” But did you know it’s technically a response track?
The 1974 song was penned as a reaction to Neil Young’s “Southern Man.” In this song, Young shared his disappointment regarding racism in the south. Lynyrd Skynyrd responded with “Sweet Home Alabama.” There’s a line that goes, “Well, I heard Mister Young sing about her, Well, I heard ol’ Neil put her down.”
The song also mentions “the governor,” referring to George Wallace of Alabama. It seems that the band disagreed with Wallace’s pro-segregation leanings.
9. “The Ocean Grew Hands To Hold Me” By The Wonder Years
Coming home isn’t always an easy choice. Long-time fans of pop-punk legends The Wonder Years will likely recognize the common theme in the band’s music. In “The Ocean Grew Hands to Hold Me,” particularly.
The band often sings about trying to escape their hometown and their dislike of their current surroundings. Home is a tumultuous subject for them. But when it comes to the closing track on their album Sister Cities, home becomes something to long for.
Wishing that the current of the ocean would carry him home, he decides that enough is enough. In the line, “I’ve been running for a decade now, and I think I’m ready to go,” it’s hard for newcomers and fans alike not to get teary-eyed.
10. “Home” By Jack Johnson
Up next is a song that mentions coming home after being away for quite a while. In “Home,” Jack Johnson states that it is where love resides.
In the lyrics, the singer comes home to see that it’s been overgrown. He lists off his responsibilities, including tending his garden. The fruits on the ground, his dead lime tree, and the birds living in his attic are an indication of how long he’d been away.
This somber track is a crucial reminder to pay attention to the world around you. Letting your responsibilities pile up without addressing them leads to your garden, literally or metaphorically, dying away.
11. “Gone” By Benjamin Clementine
While the song makes no mention of home, certain clues tell us that “Gone” is about it. Benjamin Clementine sings about how his home fills him with a sense of ennui and nostalgia that’s hard to match.
In the lyrics, the singer goes back to his old place and remembers walking home with food for his family. He observes the streets and goes back to the “pavements and fields” he used to know. He gets lost along the way because everything had changed.
Even the road he used to “cross to school is now full of prostitutes.” At the same time, he wonders when a friend had gotten married or where his old neighbors have gone to.
12. “Ravens” By Mount Eerie
What happens when a home is lost? Mount Eerie’s “Ravens” focuses on the passing of his late wife and how it transformed his life.
He ends up raising their child alone, with the home that he built, with her feeling hollow and shifting now. He still remembers how cancer took her away from him more than a month ago.
One particularly beautiful moment on “Ravens” involves taking a boat out to Haida Gawii, the island where they first became close. Reflecting on the memories there, he decides that the forest surrounding their property is home. And it’s where he decides to grieve while at the same time celebrating her life.
13. “Home” By Daughtry
An homage to homesickness, Daughtry’s “Home” follows a similar vein to some songs on this list. The song came out in 2007 from the band’s self-titled album.
“Home” was inspired by Chris Daughtry’s experiences when he was just starting in the music industry. It meant being away from his family for the first time. The song opens with the singer reflecting on going home, where he always feels he belongs.
He doesn’t regret the path he took, although it takes him away from his family most of the time. However, nothing beats the feeling of coming home to his loved ones.
14. “Mama, I’m Coming Home” By Ozzy Osbourne
When you think of the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne, you may not think of touching stories of coming home. And you’d be right! Osbourne’s “Mama, I’m Coming Home” looks at how his time on tour has changed him.
In a song with “coming home” in the lyrics, times have changed, and so has he. Time flew by and witnessed how he’d never be the same man. He comes home to his family, only for his wife to take him in and drive him out.
Not only that. She tells him lies and makes him cry. But despite having countless bad experiences at home, he’s returning anyway.
15. “Take Me Home” By Phil Collins
You’ll often find Phil Collins’ “Take Me Home” on lists such as these. But what if we told you it wasn’t how it seemed? If you listen to the lyrics, Collins’s track is a stark, solemn look at mental institutions.
Through the song, the narrator sings of how he can’t escape his home. The “fire that’s been burnin’ right outside my door” could be an allusion to things that keep him from leaving. The outside scares him as well, and the people around him ignore his feelings.
Shortly into the song, it becomes clear that the singer is in an asylum. He no longer remembers his home, and so he pleads with his listener to “take me home.”
16. “A Home” By Rivers Of Nihil
What do you do if your home isn’t where you belong? In “A Home,” Rivers of Nihil investigates where a man’s home lies.
In the lyrics, we find out that the singer is alone and unfamiliar people surround him (“these faces you cannot recall”). He is saying that what’s “beneath us” can never be called home.
While people may have all the riches and material things, they can never call home their life on Earth. As it turns out, the home that the singer looks for is within himself.
17. “I’m Coming Home” By Lionel Richie
In our next song, “I’m Coming Home,” Lionel Richie reflects on the mistakes he made in his life. The track was from his 2006 album, Coming Home.
In the song, we find the singer contemplating the past. He is regretful for all the things he “shoulda done, coulda done.” But times have gone by before his eyes, realizing how many missteps people make in their youth. He has to experience losing everything before knowing the path he should take.
Knowing that he wasn’t in the wrong to live his life the way he did, he acknowledges that he’s been through pain. He takes the lessons he’s learned and sets himself on the road home with a newfound realization of how important it truly is.
18. “Coming Home” By Leon Bridges
One of the more uplifting songs on our list, Leon Bridges’ “Coming Home,” is an ode to a loved one. Here, the singer refers to her as his home.
The song finds the singer stating that his travels around the world have left a bitter taste in his mouth. Most probably, he is disappointed with what he saw in people and his overall experiences in life. He declares his intent to come home because his lover is all he needs.
While the lyrics are a bit repetitive, this soulful number speaks to the value of making a home with someone. With that person you love, you are home and you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
19. “Wagon Wheel” By Old Crow Medicine Show
Home doesn’t always have to be about a physical house. Such is the case in Old Crow Medicine Show‘s “Wagon Wheel.” The chorus of the song is borrowed from Bob Dylan’s “Rock Me Momma.”
In the lyrics, we discover that the singer does a lot of traveling as “a fiddler in an old-time string band.” There’s a point when he became broke after playing poker. He doesn’t have his own car or money to get around places.
At this particular time, he’s traveling back to Raleigh, where his lover is. The song shows us that no matter what happens, he always finds a way to see her. It reflects the idea that e person who’s dear to us can become our home.
20. “Coming Home” By Diddy-Dirty Money Ft. Skylar Grey
Like Daughtry’s “Home,” Diddy-Dirty Money‘s “Coming Home” is based on certain events in Diddy’s life. He collaborated with Skylar Grey, who provided soft vocals in the chorus.
The song basically reflects on the mistakes the singer made in his life. The line, “Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday, “suggests that he wants to put them behind him. He just wants to be home with all the people who matter.
The song is also a tribute to Diddy’s friend, the Notorious B.I.G., with the line “I miss you BIG.” At the end of the song, he thanks the Lord for making him a better man.
21. “I’m Coming Home” By The Spinners
Closing our list is the soul and R&B number “I’m Coming Home” by The Spinners. With a bright brass section and an addictive set of strings, The Spinners offer a melancholic celebration of home.
With all the chaos going on in the world, there’s always that place where we can find comfort. That’s right, home. The singer is disappointed at how things turned out for him. He set out to follow his dreams, only for people to destroy them and knock him down.
Tired of all these, he sets his eyes on coming home and making new dreams. Perhaps get himself a wife, and be a better man.
Summing Up Our List Of Coming Home Songs
Coming home stirs some really deep emotions. For a lot of people, it evokes feelings of euphoria and longing. After all, it means being with your loved ones again. For some, it’s understandably a stressful moment.
Whatever it is, there are countless songs that celebrate coming home. We hope you found a song, or two, to help you feel the moment of being home again. And may these songs guide you to that place or people where you belong.
