Johnny Come Home

Album: Fine Young Cannibals (1985)
Charted: 8 76
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  • Nobody knows
    The trouble you feel
    Nobody cares
    The feelin' is real

    Johnny,
    We're sorry,
    Won't you come on home
    We worry,
    Won't you come on
    What is wrong in my life
    I must get drunk every night
    Johnny,
    We're sorry

    Use the phone,
    Call your mom
    She's missing you badly,
    Missing her son

    Who do you know,
    Where will you stay
    Big city life
    Is not what they say

    Johnny,
    We're sorry,
    Won't you come on home
    We worry,
    Won't you come on
    What is wrong in my life
    That I must get drunk every night
    Johnny,
    We're sorry

    You'd better go,
    Everything's closed
    Can't find a room,
    Money's all blown
    Nowhere to sleep,
    Out in the cold
    Nothing to eat,
    Nowhere to go

    Johnny,
    We're sorry,
    Won't you come on home
    We worry,
    Won't you come on
    What is wrong in my life
    That I must get drunk every night
    Johnny,
    We're sorry
    Won't you come on home
    We worry,
    Won't you come on home
    Johnny
    Won't you come on home Writer/s: DAVID STEELE, ROLAND LEE GIFT
    Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
    Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 2

  • AnonymousJohnny = Johnny Gosh/Jeff Gannon
  • AnonymousThe song is a retort to Bronski Beat's hit the previous year, "Small Town Boy" - hence the similarity of the tune in their choruses, except "Johnny Comes Home" sounds more sinister.

    Bronski Beat's song (and especially the video) reinforced the myth of London as a welcoming gay paradise, when in reality it was cold, seedy and home to predators like Dennis Nielson who murdered at least a dozen homeless gays for his own gratification - one of whom was a cousin of one of the band's members - and had been arrested only the previous year.

    It wasn't the only song to offer a retort to Bronski Beat - The Men They Couldn't Hang also released a song called "Johnny Come Home", but the lyrics were far more blunt and dealt with the fate of the runaway, rather than the impact on those he's left behind: the subject of the song being lured to a predator's house with the promise of a bed for the night, where he is murdered and dissected, similar to Nielson's crimes.
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