Songfacts®:

• Bob James (later the keyboard player of Fourplay), who co-produced the album with Phil Ramone, wrote this song with Loggins, who was in New York and missing home.
• Kenny Loggins didn't set out to write a holiday song - it was his producer Phil Ramone, who persuaded him to pen lyrics about missing home during the festive period. "I wrote it in the Christmas season. I was in New York and I wanted to go home," he told ABC Audio. "I thought the phrase 'Celebrate Me Home' was a filler phrase, the way the classic story of [Paul] McCartney saying 'Scrambled Eggs' really became 'Yesterday.'"
  
  "And so I thought 'Celebrate Me Home' was just something that I'd replace," Loggins continued. "And then when I played it for Phil Ramone, he said, 'No, that's the phrase!' And so I went upstairs and wrote it based on being homesick."
• Kenny Loggins (from his website): "I think my best stuff - songs like 'Danny's Song,' 'A Love Song,' 'Celebrate Me Home' - has always been written in the first person about things that mattered to me the most."
• American Idol season 2 winner Ruben Studdard recorded this as the "farewell song" for the finals of the 2008 contest. "Celebrate Me Home" was chosen after American Idol executive producer Nigel Lythgoe suggested the tune to 19 Entertainment US head Iain Pirie and show creator Simon Fuller. Pirie told Billboard magazine: "Each year we think about what's going to reflect that really special TV moment. Musically and lyrically, it fits it perfectly."
• This is traditionally thought of as a Christmas song and often played on radio stations during the holiday season because it is about one's desire to be "Home for the holidays" (Clay Aiken sang it on his 2005 Christmas tour). The "home for the holidays" line was removed in Studdard's version to make it less seasonal.
• Studdard's recording of "Celebrate Me Home" was produced by Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam. Lewis commented to Hollywood Reporter: "It's very soulful, very heartfelt. Ruben is singing his pants off." Studdard added, "Lewis and Jam were on my list of producers to work with, and to have the opportunity was a blessing. If they tell you something is hot, you can probably rest assured that other people are going to like it."
• Loggins later recorded two live versions of the song: on Alive (1980) and Outside From the Redwoods (1993). >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Sara - Silver Spring, MD
• Previous American Idol farewell songs were Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" for the 2006 fifth season and Daughtry's "Home" for the 2007 sixth season. For the 2008 seventh season, Ferras's "Hollywood's Not America " was used for the Hollywood rounds while Graham Colton's "Best Days" was the elimination song in the semifinals.
• Prior to releasing Celebrate Me Home, his debut solo album, Loggins was one half of the popular pop/rock duo Loggins & Messina, who had a number of hits in the early '70s, including "Danny's Song" and "Your Mama Don't Dance."
• LeAnn Rimes recorded this as a duet with Gavin DeGraw for her 2015 album, Today Is Christmas. Their version went to #12 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
• This was used on Beverly Hills, 90210 in the 1991 episode "Home Again."