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She's Leaving Home
  

By John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Sung by Paul

1967

Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hope would say more
She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the back door key
Stepping outside she is free

She (we gave her most of our lives)
Is leaving (sacrificed most of our lives)
Home (we gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home after living alone (bye, bye) for so many years

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 (bye, bye) for so many years

Friday morning at nine o'clock she is far away
Waiting to keep the appointment she made
Meeting a man from a motor trade

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 (bye, bye) for so many years
She's leaving home (bye, bye)
 beatles.jpg (8844 Byte)A girl leaves home because she would like to have fun and because she feels alone. Her parents are sad and ask themselves: "What did we do wrong that she went away from us?"
The girl likes to tell her parents with her decision that they did something wrong. She would like to have fun and hopes to find it in another place. Her parents always gave her money because they thought that their daughter would be happy then. But their daughter likes to have something that money is not able to buy. Maybe she was allowed to go out in the evenings, but with all those presents and the freedom they gave her the parents forgot the most important thing: they could not give love to her, and the daughter probably felt this even more than her parents. Why were the parents not able to give her love? Did they both have to work all day and did they not have enough time for their daughter? That explains why the parents do not know why their daughter ran away.
The parents want to buy the love of their daughter with money, but they do not care about her. She does not have fun with her family and she feels very lonely. So she leaves and would like to tell her parents in that way that she is unhappy.
Some of the statements in the song are in brackets because those statements are the thoughts of the parents. THE BEATLES sing these statements in the background, while another voice sings the main sentences of the narrator. The main text without emotions belongs to the girl´s side. Perhaps she did not feel anything when she left home. The mother says that their "baby is gone". Perhaps they always treated her like a little child and not like a teenager.
When you hear the song you feel a little bit sad. But you especially begin to think about the people in the song and about your own family. Maybe you remember a situation in which you wanted to run away, too?
The family in the song has a great problem. The parents think that their daughter is happy. The parents are blind because they think that they never cared about themselves. They did not understand her, the family did not speak about their problems. Perhaps the girl told her thoughts and problems to her friends only, to a diary, or she did not tell anybody and kept it to herself.But when the girl is far away, they realize that fun is the one thing that money can´t buy. And the girl wants to have fun, not money. Now the girl does not have to feel lonesome any more, but is she happier? Running away is a hard way to say: "You have done something wrong!"

J.B & L.H. (January 2004)

 

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