Feels Like Home

Album: Harps and Angels (2008)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This was originally included on Newman's 1995 all-star updated musical version of Faust, which was sung by Bonnie Raitt on the album. It was a surprise that he closed Harps and Angels with his own version of this tune as in 2000 Newman had said that this song "doesn't interest me lyrically at all." He admitted to Mojo magazine September 2008: "I shouldn't say things like that. People say they played it at their wedding; I hear more from strangers about that song than anything else I've written. People think, 'I love that song - he must think people like me are stupid.' Believe me, I don't condescend to an audience or think it's stupid ever. But I try and tell the truth, and there isn't anything in (that song) that is particularly distinctive to me. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was the most popular song on the record - that's what people like. I included it because I wanted to get my version down, and maybe it's the best version of the song out of (Linda) Ronstadt and Dolly Parton and the Canadian artist Chantal Kreviazuk. If you write a song you think people will like, you'll do it!"
  • By 2017, Randy Newman hadn't become any fonder of the songs that he wrote for other singers in the 1990s. "Do you see the difference between my usual songs and those?", he asked Mojo. "There's nothing in them! There's no s--t, piss, fart, f--- and damn. There's nothing that disqualifies them from another person doing it. I'm glad I can write that stuff, but I'm less interested in Feels Like Home then I am in Back On My Feet Again because there's a person in that. And there he is, in the nuthouse. I can see him! And I can't see anybody in Feels Like Home.'"

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Chad Channing (Nirvana, Before Cars)

Chad Channing (Nirvana, Before Cars)Songwriter Interviews

Chad tells tales from his time as drummer for Nirvana, and talks about his group Before Cars.

Oliver Leiber

Oliver LeiberSongwriter Interviews

Oliver Leiber talks about writing and producing hits for Paula Abdul, and explains his complicated relationship with his father, the songwriter Jerry Leiber.

Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles

Timothy B. Schmit of the EaglesSongwriter Interviews

Did this Eagle come up with the term "Parrothead"? And what is it like playing "Hotel California" for the gazillionth time?

Al Kooper

Al KooperSongwriter Interviews

Kooper produced Lynyrd Skynyrd, played with Dylan and the Stones, and formed BS&T.

Tommy James

Tommy JamesSongwriter Interviews

"Mony Mony," "Crimson and Clover," "Draggin' The Line"... the hits kept coming for Tommy James, and in a plot line fit for a movie, his record company was controlled by the mafia.

Steve Cropper (Booker T & the MG's, Blues Brothers)

Steve Cropper (Booker T & the MG's, Blues Brothers)Songwriter Interviews

Steve Cropper on the making of "In the Midnight Hour," the chicken-wire scene in The Blues Brothers, and his 2021 album, Fire It Up.