Home Isn’t Home Anymore – Alan Garrity
Home Isn’t Home Anymore – Alan Garrity
‘Home Isn’t Home Anymore’ was Alan Garrity’s 3rd song to make the Springbok Top 20. He had seen ‘Put Your Hand In The Hand’, his first top 20 hit, go to number 1, and then his second hit, ‘I Need Someone’, spent 33 weeks in the charts and that was an all time record for weeks in the top 20 (a few other songs broke this record but did so by adding weeks from time spent in positions 21 – 30 once the charts were extended to a top 30).
So ‘Home Isn’t Home Anymore’ had a lot to live up to. Sadly for Alan Garrity, it would not fare as well as its predecessors, but still spent a very respectable 16 weeks on the charts and peaked at 5.
In a way, one could say that Alan Garrity was the Engelbert Humperdinck of the South African music scene of the early 70’s as not only did he have an impressive chart record (as did Engelbert, his first 7 hits went top 5 in the UK and included 2 number 1’s) but Alan’s style was very similar – big songs with a grand orchestral sound underpinning a strong vocal that soars on the chorus. And this is what you get with ‘Home Isn’t Home Anymore’ which fits perfectly into this formula. It has the strings, the building chorus and the almost simple waltz like time to the rhythm.
It would have made a good song for the first dance at a wedding reception back then, except for the fact that the lyrics are about a love that has left with the man pining for the return of his (presumably) wife. Perhaps if one had a divorce reception, this may have been the track to have the first dance to.
Where to find it:
Yesterday’s Best Vol 2, 1995, Teal, MORCD536
Video:
1001 South African Songs You Must Hear Before You Go Deaf 