Maryland

Album: The Radical Light (1992)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • It took three years for Vonda Shepard to write "Maryland," but it was on her mind for much longer.

    The singer and her three sisters were left as children to be raised by their father. On her 1992 album, The Radical Light, she offers forgiveness to her absent mother in songs like "Cartwheels" and "Maryland." The latter was named for her mother's desire to live in Baltimore. Shepard explained: "So I took her dream of home, her placement of home, and I put it into my song as if I'm coming home to Maryland. Because that's where my mother wants to be. So in my song I want to go home to that place. In the song it makes it sound like I grew up in Maryland. I kind of put a twist on that." (from our interview with Vonda Shepard)

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Carol Kaye

Carol KayeSongwriter Interviews

A top session musician, Carol played on hundreds of hits by The Beach Boys, The Monkees, Frank Sinatra and many others.

Corey Hart

Corey HartSongwriter Interviews

The Canadian superstar talks about his sudden rise to fame, and tells the stories behind his hits "Sunglasses At Night," "Boy In The Box" and "Never Surrender."

Lita Ford

Lita FordSongwriter Interviews

Lita talks about how they wrote songs in The Runaways, and how she feels about her biggest hit being written by somebody else.

Rosanne Cash

Rosanne CashSongwriter Interviews

Rosanne talks about the journey that inspired her songs on her album The River & the Thread, including a stop at the Tallahatchie Bridge.

Kevin Godley

Kevin GodleySongwriter Interviews

Kevin Godley talks about directing classic videos for The Police, U2 and Duran Duran, and discusses song and videos he made with 10cc and Godley & Creme.

Stand By Me: The Perfect Song-Movie Combination

Stand By Me: The Perfect Song-Movie CombinationSong Writing

In 1986, a Stephen King novella was made into a movie, with a classic song serving as title, soundtrack and tone.