Maryland

Album: The Radical Light (1992)
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Songfacts®:

  • It took three years for Vonda Shepard to write "Maryland," but it was on her mind for much longer.

    The singer and her three sisters were left as children to be raised by their father. On her 1992 album, The Radical Light, she offers forgiveness to her absent mother in songs like "Cartwheels" and "Maryland." The latter was named for her mother's desire to live in Baltimore. Shepard explained: "So I took her dream of home, her placement of home, and I put it into my song as if I'm coming home to Maryland. Because that's where my mother wants to be. So in my song I want to go home to that place. In the song it makes it sound like I grew up in Maryland. I kind of put a twist on that." (from our interview with Vonda Shepard)

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