Give Me Back My Hometown

Everybody has that time in their youth when everything seemed to be going great, feeling on top of the world. Before the songwriter experienced broken relationships, broken dreams, and moving away from home, he was living a high school life of football and a girl (who eventually chose to leave in search of something better). When I hear this song, I imagine Eric revisiting his hometown, and remembering all of the good and bad memories. Looking down at the football field, every emotion just comes rushing back, but life has irreversibly changed since then. My favorite lines are in the bridge, "You can have ___". He's saying, I may have all of these items that remind me of my youth, but they're hollow. I would trade all of these things in just to be able to go back and experience the days of my youth again in this place. Sometimes you need to mourn for the loss of the good ol' days.

Going on a limb, but perhaps the red and green may refer to the football team, as his high school team wore red jerseys, playing on a green field.

Well it seems to me that he fell in love with this girl and she moved back with him to his hometown and they fell out of love. She moved away and now everything in his town reminds him of them so he wants remember his hometown the way he used before her. Even going to Pizza Hut reminds him of her.

I think the correct lyrics are "the red, the green, the hope, the truth."

Anyway, to me this song is a sequel to Springsteen. The events in Springsteen didn't end well as shown by the video. The person he loved has now left him, perhaps moving out of his hometown, everything they did around his town are haunting the narrator, and everywhere he goes he keeps thinking about her, when he just wants to forget and "get his hometown back. I love Eric Church, and can't wait for his new album

I looked at the video as seeing that now his hometown has become corrupt and it seems that the girl he loved has either passed away or was part of a deal that saw her rat him to the cops

My opinion on the song is that he went through a divorce.

Thinkin' about you sittin' there sayin' I hate this, I hate it If you couldn't stand livin' here why'd you take it, take it

From that I get that if she didn't want to live there with him why did she take his proposal, and her negative attitude sucked the life out of his hometown.

From music inside u website:

Meaning of Give Me Back My Hometown: The key phrase is I used to love this view. We all hate letting go, because in a perfect world we wouldn't have to. Loves would never die and tragedy would never strike. But they do. That's where the song ends: hopeless bitter loss. It's beautiful in it's own way - if you're hurting that bad, it means your love ran deep. Still, Give Me Back My Hometown is missing a key ingredient: hope. Despair might be what you feel like, but it won't get you anywhere. First, you have to trust that you can make a difference. Second, you can't forget that even if you fail, there's more to life than this world. You hope that when life is over and done with, there's place where no one ever has to die again. Hope keeps love alive. In spite of loss. Even in spite of failure.

See link below

musicinsideu.com/2014/01/give-me-back-my-hometown-eric-church.html

Maybe I'm over-simplifying, but I come from a small town. When it was tiny, it was great. Who had our country ways.

After a while, tourists started to flock in and move there permanently. Politicians moved from large cities and passed laws to change the things we once loved. Rules on the river and things like that.

So, "If you couldn't stand livin' here why'd you take it" hits home. Why move to a location and mold it into the place you came from?

Give me back my hometown.

For what it's worth, there seems to be two meanings from this song- from the lyrics alone- I think it is about lost love and trying to forget the past where everything reminds him of the girl (she may have even taken her own life- 'I hate this, I hate this') and he wants to move on and see the town as he used to growing up.

From the video, however, I get the sense that it's about taking back our country- to bring back the factories and manufacturing and jobs, the 'mom and pop' stores - the good old 'made in America' label - a time when English was the only language spoken and before the Walmarts of the world invaded towns. A time when pride in your community and country and working hard made America strong. The cemetery in the beginning is the lost America, the quaint, towns gone. The background looks like a wasteland representing lost jobs that have gone overseas. The rich woman is the 'take over', the greed of corporate America to make more money at the expense of lower paying jobs or lost jobs overseas or even foreigners buying up our land and businesses. It's an ode to the times when life was simpler and I'm proud to be American- born and bred ruled. Apple pie, baseball, Sunday picnics with the family, having real conversations instead of texting . . . okay, I'll stop now.

When i first heard this song I thought that his girlfriend\wife left him and he was haunted because he had memories of her all through out their town... but .... then I saw the music video and it seams like she died somehow (not sure but in the end of the song they show a girl and she looks like she's and addict and she's in the back of a bar; just looked shady to me) but now the town is (as with the left him theory) full of bad memories. -LoCoIR

From listening to the song and watching the video I get that she died. I'm actually very curious how she died... From a hustle gone bad? From her addiction which also showed a glimpse of? Or from a secret cartel because she may have shorted some money? It's very questionable. I also get from the song that she never liked the town to begin with but moved there while they were in high school. Or maybe it may have even been not a girlfriend but his mom or step mom? It's a very vague song but I love it as I can relate to it as a loss of loved ones.