Honey, I'm Home

Album: Come On Over (1997)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song is a play on domestic roles from an earlier generation when the husband would come home from work, declare, "Honey, I'm Home," and his wife would tend to him while also handling dinner, kids and housework. The phrase is a trope that popped up a lot on TV in the '60s and '70s.

    Shania Twain does a role reversal, coming home from work and expecting her man to rub her feet while she watches TV. It's from a woman's perspective, so she also has to deal with a run in her pantyhose and flat hair.

    Twain was known to flaunt her femininity while also being a world-beater, not just in the male-dominated world of country music, but in the industry at large.
  • Twain did have a supportive husband to come home to, and he in fact wrote this song with her and also produced it. She was married at the time to Mutt Lange, the hitmaker for Def Leppard, Billy Ocean, Bryan Adams, and even AC/DC (they divorced in 2010). When he started working with Twain, he hadn't produced a country artist and hadn't worked much with female artists (he did write the Heart hit "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You"). Still, he and Twain clicked right away, romantically and professionally. Starting with Shania's second album, The Woman In Me in 1995, they teamed up to write her songs, imbuing them her vivacious personality. He produced them with the same sheen he put on Def Leppard songs, just with more twang. The results were spectacular. Twain had four #1 Country hits on that album and broke through to the pop charts as well. Her next album, Come On Over, included "Honey, I'm Home" and did even better, going on to sell over 20 million copies in the US.
  • Surprisingly, "Honey, I'm Home" was the last of Shania Twain's seven #1 Country hits. She outgrew the genre in a way as she garnered more mainstream appeal. Country radio wasn't so interested in playing tracks like "That Don't Impress Me Much" and "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" when they were all over pop radio. This made room for upstarts like Jo Dee Messina and The Chicks.
  • Twain has plenty of hits to choose from, but "Honey, I'm Home" is a stalwart of her setlists, played on most of her tours and also as part of her Las Vegas residency.

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