Randoms by Rach

She's Leaving Home

She’s Leaving Home
Album: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967
Lead vocalist: Paul




Lyrics ▼

Wednesday morning at five o'clock
As the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes down the stairs to the kitchen
Clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key
Stepping outside, she is free
She, ... (we gave her most of our lives)
Is leaving (sacrified most of our lives)
Home (we gave her everything money could buy)
Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband
Daddy, our baby's gone.
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?
How could she do this to me?
She (we never thought of ourselves)
Is leaving (never a thought for ourselves)
Home (we struggled hard all our lives to get by)
She's leaving home, after living alone, for so many years
Friday morning, at nine o'clock
She is far away
Waiting to keep the appointment she made
Greeting a man from the Motortrade
She (what did we do that was wrong)
Is Having (we didn't know it was wrong)
Fun (fun is the one thing that money can't buy)
Something inside, that was always denied,
for so many years,
She's leaving home

This is one of those songs that makes me feel sad. I can relate to both sides of the story here. The one, where a teenager has felt smothered at home, like she’s never been allowed to be herself and live her own life on her own terms. And then, the parents who had no idea they were smothering her and are absolutely distraught that their daughter has left. The lines, “Standing alone at the top of the stairs, She breaks down and cries to her husband, Daddy, our baby's gone.” always bring a lump to my throat. Of course, they are followed with questions of how their daughter could be so selfish. I think this is something that almost everyone will relate to on some level. I love how the daughter thinks that fun is the one thing money can’t buy. According to The Beatles themselves, there is also 'love'.

Paul was inspired to write this song by a story he read in the Daily Mail about a seventeen-year-old girl who had left home to be with her boyfriend, a croupier. He based the song on her, although, he says, the majority of the details are made up.

This song is the first Beatles song where the string arrangement was not done by George Martin. Apparently, he was busy working on something else, but Paul was eager to get the song recorded, so he asked an arranger called Mike Leander to step in. Martin was supposedly hurt by this, and Paul says he never really forgave him. He did, however, produce the song. Finally … this song won the 1967 Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically & Lyrically. Not bad, eh?