Songfacts®:

• This lament was released as the first single from American folk-rock singer-songwriter John Hiatt 20th album Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns.
• Hiatt explained his songwriting process in an interview with American Songwriter: "I sit down to play the guitar, usually the acoustic, and some riff or chord progression will come out of it. And then I'll start singing a melody and because I don't have words yet, I'll sing nonsense. If I'm lucky then a line will come out of, just, the magic of songwriting I guess. I don't pretend to know what that is, but you know lines just pop out, like with 'Damn This Town.' I had that first riff and then I went from E minor up to that C chord and I started singing 'Damn This Town. I mean it this time, I made up my mind. I'm leaving. I've gotta get the hell out of here.' And surely that's dealing with the whole 'The grass is greener on the other side' idea."
• Hiatt's career stretches back to the mid 1970s and despite several Grammy Award nominations, he has never cracked the top 40 of the singles or albums chart under his own name. However, Three Dog Night did reach #16 on the Hot 100 with one of his compositions "Sure as I'm Sittin' Here" in 1974.