Songfacts®:

• Staind lead singer Aaron Lewis wrote this vulnerable song about being away from his wife, Vanessa, when the band goes on tours. Far from glamorous, life on the road lands him in hotels, away from his loved ones. In the song, he lays out his biggest fear: that he'll come and Vanessa will be gone.
  
  Lewis wrote the lyric and composed the music along with his Staind bandmates, who are all credited as writers.
• Lewis and his wife Vanessa met before he hit it big with Staind. Aaron wasn't even sure he wanted to be a musician: he went to college to study jewelry design so he could go into his family's goldsmithing business. And his bandmates weren't guys he grew up with - they all came together in Springfield, Massachusetts, and while they bonded over music, they didn't have tight personal bonds.
  
  Lewis' brutal honestly in this song made his priorities clear. He and Vanessa stayed together and had three daughters. When Staind toured in 2001, Vanessa came along as a videographer.
• "Home" was the third single from Staind's 1999 album Dysfunction, their first on a major label. Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit started mentoring the band in 1997 and invited them to Jacksonville, where they worked on the album under his direction (he's credited as a co-producer). After the album was released, Staind joined Limp Bizkit on the Family Values tour, where they picked up many new fans. "Home" and the first two singles, "Just Go" and "Mudshovel," got airplay on Modern Rock radio, and in 2000 the album was certified Platinum for sales of over one million in America. Staind's next album, Break The Cycle, was huge, thanks to the tracks "It's Been Awhile" and "Outside." Many of their new fans went back and bought the Dysfunction album, pushing it to over 2 million.
• Fred Durst directed the music video, which shows the band on the road, staying at a nondescript motel. It gets less literal later on, with scenes of Lewis standing on a cliff. In one impressive shot, he jumps off and turns into a flock of birds.