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Homesick (Original)

Type: Official
Writers: Grace Vanderwaal
Times Performed: 11
Play on Apple Music
Play on Spotify

Notes

Grace explained the background for the song when she first sang it in public at the Grammy Museum in November 2024:

The song was written with ‘Dough’ in Brooklyn. She told him about a therapy session she had had, and she had told the therapist that “I binge my pain like potato chips. That’s my guilty pleasure. Save it up, and then, under the sheets, indulge. In the heat of these moments, I often feel like I am being cradled by a mother. And she asked – ‘well, what does the mother look like?’ and I was so self-centered that I had never zoomed out the image,. But it was this absolute golden epitome of this maternal god and safety. And then I was talking to Dough, and we were talking about nostalgia and how my childhood home got ripped down, and how it’s so symbolic that I couldnøt even go back if I wanted to. I remember when I was younger, and all I wanted was to grow up and get out of my house, and everything would be OK; if I just got out of my house and I had freedom and an apartment, that’s when everything would absolutely be OK. And now I have all those things, and I am like – everything would be OK if I could just wake up in my bed again and hear the chickadees and go on a yellow school bus, man – those were the days. And we realized that we are always teetering to this unobtainable epitome of peace. For some reason, this fabricated memory is not real; when you narrow it down, it never happened. It’s this weird definition you had about when everything was good. And it leads to never living in the moment and having a very dissatisfying life. But anyway, we wrote a song about it, and it’s called Homesick.”

In the description for the music video she explained: “For my entire childhood, I thought, 'When I have an apartment in New York City, everything will be okay.' Now, I'm grown up, and I think, 'Everything would be okay if I was just waking up at seven and waiting for the school bus again'. Nostalgia is painful. We always look back at a moment we considered to be the epitome of perfection, but was it ever real?”

"Homesick has the craving arms that never held me, a childhood bed that may never even have existed, like you remember your childhood as a place where the grass was saturated green and the air was full of the cleanest oxygen you ever smelled” (Grace to (Zach Sang, April 2025)

"For my entire childhood, I thought, ‘When I have an apartment in New York City, everything will be okay.’ Now, I’m grown up, and I think, ‘Everything would be okay if I was just waking up at seven and waiting for the school bus again’. Nostalgia is painful. We always look back at a moment we considered to be the epitome of perfection, but was it ever real?" (Interview with Pulp Magazine, May 2025)

In their review of the album, CelebMix wrote this about "Homesick": “Homesick” is a hushed elegy to a childhood that never quite was. “You’re romanticizing an unattainable memory,” she explains. “Nostalgia is painful. We always look back at a moment we considered to be the epitome of perfection, but… was it ever real?” It’s a stunning realization—one that lingers and echoes into the rest of the album.



Performances

2024.11.19 Grammy Museum "Spotlight" (The GRAMMY Museum)
2025.04.03 CHILDSTAR Final Act ()
2025.05.04 Lincoln Hall Childstar Tour
2025.05.04 Lincoln Hall Childstar Tour
2025.05.04 Lincoln Hall Childstar Tour "Soundcheck" before the show
2025.05.07 The Great Hall Childstar Tour
2025.05.09 Atlantis Childstar Tour
2025.05.10 Racket Childstar Tour Full song
2025.05.18 The Roxy Childstar Tour Shot from front of stage right
2025.05.21 Brick & Mortar Childstar Tour
2025.05.24 VIER Live (Electric Pony Studios) Childstar Tour

Reviews, Reactions etc.

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Releases

Release Date Record Type Track

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
I'm homesick for a day that never happened
And I'm going to a place that I imagined
I'll awaken in my bed, the sheets are sweated
I don't know when the best of my life happened

[Chorus]
'Cause I waste every moment on the chase
Oh, it's never over
For the day that can't get any better
If it's not mine, it's gone forever
But then why do I remember?

[Verse 2]
I'm craving arms that never held me like a mother
Who's love's so safe it's deadly
And I'm small, and I'm warm and all that's real is the moment
And I'm no longer a woman, I just melt into the floor

[Chorus]
While I waste every moment on the chase
Oh, it's never over
For the day that can't get any better
If it's not mine, it's gone forever
But then why do I remember?

[Bridge]
All I ever wanted never did exist at all
I feel like my whole life has been haunted
By a child who never was
And all I ever wanted never did exist at all
I feel like my whole life has been haunted
By a child who never was

[Outro]
All I ever wanted never did exist at all, mmh
By a child who never was

Covers and Remixes

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