"Take Me Home, Country Roads"
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Meaning Behind the Lyrics“Take Me Home” illustrates the feeling of home-sickness. In the first verse, Denver sets the scene of his “almost heaven,” describing the setting of West Virginia and the many natural landmarks it has to offer.
In the line “Life is old there, older than the trees,” Denver shows his respect to the land, because seniority is linked to wisdom and often times we look up to our elders for comfort and advice. He then mentions someone( maybe himself) being “ Younger than the mountains, Growin' like a breeze.” Denver might be talking about himself and how he is young and humbled by the mountains he reveres so much. Furthermore, when he returns home, he finds himself growing like a breeze, both literally in age and spirituality. The chorus is very straight-forward. He wants to return to “country roads”: the place where he belongs. In this case it is West Virginia among the blue ridge mountains. However, he mentions a “mountain momma,” which brings back to the importance of the mountains to Denver. In addition, mothers are the symbol of comfort and nurture; Denver refers to the mountains as a momma, in the sense that he finds them as comforting as a mothers touch would to a child. In the beginning of the second verse, he references how all his good memories revolve around a “miner’s lady.” Miners work in mountains, so, again, Denver emphasizes the importance of the mountains to him. The lines “stranger to blue water, Dark and dusty, painted on the sky, Misty taste of moonshine, Teardrops in my eye,” in verse two, describe the hard work that Denver did. However he is nostalgic of the moments of reward in between the hard work where he was able to enjoy a nice country moonshine. The teardrops represent this longing. The whole third verse is about how Denver is regretful that he isn’t back in the place that he loves and is constantly reminded of it. The line “The radio reminds me of my home far away,” may have been written by Bill Danoff, since he used to listen to a radio station that often described the beauty of West Virginia. |