It is a common trope in music, especially in music popular with many Millennials, to include lyrics about wishing to get away from home, and those lyrics seem to resonate very well with many people who live in towns like where I grew up: Johnstown, Pennsylvania (Where all pictures in this article were taken). At one time a critical stop along the PA Main Line Canal and Pennsylvania Railroad and a tremendous steel manufacturing plant, Johnstown sits firmly in the rust belt. Not many opportunities remain for young people there.

Courtesy of Coal Camp USA.

However, many, including the organization I interned for last summer (The Community Foundation for the Alleghenies) are working to better the environs of Johnstown and make it more desirable to live and work in.

Now, what the hell does this have to do with music? Well, this week we‰’ll be looking at a few songs that do the opposite of what I mentioned earlier: songs that talk about staying home. Reasons why we stay, what happens when we stay, etc. For the sake of time, I‰’ll only mention three: “Big Trouble in Little Gainesville‰” by Coffee Project, “Spinning in Circles is a Gateway Drug‰” by Red City Radio, and “If Only for Memories‰” by Toh Kay.

Coffee Project, a side project of Jake Crown and Buddy Schaub, released their first full-length album, Moved On, in 2010, and “Big Trouble in Little Gainesville‰” closes it. (It also has one of my favorite album covers of the past few years, but I digress).

The song explores the reasons why the narrator remains in the city of Gainesville even though he desires to leave:

What is it about this city that keeps me paying rent?

And I go on and on and on and on

And the money’s all been spent

My friends have all moved on

I’m sitting on my thrift store couch

Writing the same songs

Something’s got to give

There’s big trouble in little Gainesville

And I still want to stay

Cause there’s a magnet pulling me

These lyrics are close to the opening of the song and are closer to the themes we said that we‰’re not discussing here. He is posing the question to himself as to why he‰’s still living in the college town of Gainesville after not being college-aged for an extended period of time. However, the final lyric of the chorus sets up the next short verse—one of the most telling verses as to why he‰’s still staying in Gainesville.

I know I’ve had my doubts

But when I look up in the sky, all I want to do is smile

There’s something about the sun here that’s hard to describe

He‰’s staying because he likes it here. Despite all of the crap he has to deal with such as the college students, the heat, working at a dead-end job, etc., there is a “magnet‰” pulling him back. He can‰’t bring himself to leave the city he‰’s been with for so long.

“Spinning in Circles is a Gateway Drug‰” also has an interesting take on the whole “my hometown sucks‰” thing. From the very opening, it is very clear that instead of taking a “fuck this, I‰’m leaving‰” attitude towards a crappy town, they want to stay and make it better:

Oh, country roads swerving

Singing along to the roustabouts

I‰’ll never forget where I came from

Misdirected youth passionately devout

To the city I hold dearly

But everyone talks shit about.

And I hear talks about leaving

Me? I never wanted out

I‰’d rather stay and make something out of this town.

Courtesy of Johnstown Area Heritage Association.

Numerous projects, like the Stone Bridge Project pictured above, are attempting to “make something‰” out of my hometown. This attitude seems to be gaining in popularity — the Youth Philantropy Internship I participated in last summer was responsible for funding two projects designed to make the city safer and more desirable to live in. The ideas all came from recent high school graduates from the area. Red City Radio is pushing the idea onto their fans that, while everyone “talks shit‰” about their city — as they do of Johnstown — the best way to combat that isn‰’t to leave, it is to stay and make it better yourself.

Those of you familiar with Streetlight Manifesto might be wondering why I‰’m specifically looking at the Toh Kay version of “If Only for Memories‰” and not the full band version. Don‰’t worry, I‰’ll touch on that in a bit.

This incredibly touching song goes through the life span of a single individual from cradle to grave (or close enough anyway). Of special note are the verses that detail the angsty teenage years:

So now you’re young and you feel alone,

Despite friends family and all the good things now surrounding you,

You can’t help thinking, “Oh there’s gotta be some more to do.”

When all the things that you cherish,

Turn into burdens then there is

No other path to take, you know what you got to do but you don’t know how.

They’ll hold you back, they’ll hold you down,

And you kinda feel bad but you know that you gotta get out.

This is your pain your dilemma,

Do you stay in the town where they raised ya?

Or will you sail away,

Pull the anchor and go heading for the come what may?

You have to leave,

Cause if you don’t dear,

You’ll never see the things you read about in books.

You saw the films and you were hooked,

But everything you want won’t come to you,

You realize now that you gotta go see this through.

We all have those periods where we just want to get out. On the day of my high school graduation, I couldn‰’t wait to be three and a half hours away from the place where I lived for 18 years and in our nation‰’s capital, only to return for breaks. Then my summer internship happened and I grew to love my home (lack of live music be damned). I‰’m sure the place where I grew up has shaped me and will never really leave me. And the next verse in the Toh Kay version continues into adulthood where the Streetlight version doesn‰’t:

So now you’re old, raising your own

Two souls, to put yourself at home.

You finally settled down,

You’ve seen the world but your heart never left this town.

They have the eyes of your mother,

The kind of crooked teeth of their father,

No one will ever know, a love as pure as the love that you feel for them.

You’ll hold them up, you’ll hold them up,

And everybody else should fall to the wayside.

There is no end no beginning,

On this merry-go-round we call living,

Someday you will return, every single ounce of the love you were given.

Someday they’ll go,

And when they leave home,

You will be grateful for the lesson that you learned.

You had to travel half the world,

To realize what you knew all along,

That everything will end up where it belongs.

This is the final verse of the song, but there is another repetition of the chorus, but it is at its most poignant this time, with the previous verse fresh in your head:

I believe that every broken bone is meant to be,

And when it heals it will be stronger than it was before,

And I see the things that I pretend that I don’t see,

And I keep them in my head love, if only for memories

We are reminded of why it is important to have a home: memories. Everything that happens does so for a reason, even if that reason is only to create memories. You hometown may not have been the best one, but it has shaped you and where you raise your children (should you choose to have them) will shape them.