On the Nights You Stay Home

Album: Hard Settle, Ain't Troubled (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • The upbeat song from the Canadian singer-songwriter's fourth album Hard Settle, Ain't Troubled depicts the growing effects social media has on relationships now. In our interview with Donovan Woods, he explained the influence the medium has on our lives. "I think there's this worry. We've ended absence," he said. "We are with each other all the time now because we can see through our social timelines. We can be anywhere and experience what's happening."

    He went on to reveal the story occurring in the song. "It's just playing with the idea of a couple of people being out," he said. "Maybe the narrator is a little bit resentful that somebody doesn't want to come out with him. I don't know. It's just some sort of rotten churning between two people that maybe aren't really that good for each other."
  • The chorus lyrics demonstrate well the narrator trying to manipulate someone into hitting the town with him:

    Come on, girl, get your head up right
    Come on, girl, you can lose sleep tonight
    I won't tell you about something that happened
    I won't tell you 'bout anything that happens tonight

    Girl, get your head up right
    Come on, girl, tell me some other time
    I know you wonder if I sleep alone
    On the nights you stay home


    When the tune was released, Woods further described in a statement the tale taking place. "This one is obviously about a bad relationship, maybe even a bad person," he said. "To me, it's to do with the terrifying number of modern-day opportunities to be jealous. There are so many different ways to be adored or ignored on our phones. It's easy to follow someone's every move and obsess over it, looking for some nuanced meaning. Staying home must feel really awful now. I was trying to make a song about dreadful, ruinous jealousy that might make you dance a bit."

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