Pretenders Songs - My City Was Gone Lyrics

Pretenders - My City Was Gone

Pretenders - My City Was Gone Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Learning To Crawl
Released: 1984

My City Was Gone Lyrics

I went back to Ohio
But My City Was Gone
There was no train station
There was no downtown
South Howard had disappeared
All my favorite places
My city had been pulled down
Reduced to parking spaces
A, o, way to go Ohio

Well I went back to Ohio
But my family was gone
I stood on the back porch
There was nobody home
I was stunned and amazed
My childhood memories
Slowly swirled past
Like the wind through the trees
A, o, oh way to go Ohio

I went back to Ohio
But my pretty countryside
Had been paved down the middle
By a government that had no pride
The farms of Ohio
Had been replaced by shopping malls
And Muzak filled the air
From Seneca to Cuyahoga falls
Said, a, o, oh way to go Ohio

Writer/s: HYNDE, CHRISTINE
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

My City Was Gone Song Chart

This song is about Akron, Ohio, where Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders was raised. Akron was an industrial city known as the "Rubber Capital of the World," which despite the smell of burning rubber, was a place Chrissie enjoyed growing up. In the '70s, it was gritty but vibrant, and it had a thriving rock scene with bands like Pere Ubu, Devo, The Bizarros, and Jane Aire & The Belvederes.

Hynde would augment her musical education with the R&B she could find on Detroit radio stations, and would seek out rock music from the likes of Lou Reed and The Rolling Stones. She did a lot of traveling and played in a lot of bands before forming the Pretenders in 1978 when she relocated to England. Returning to Akron in the '80s, she was disappointed in what the city had become: shopping malls and segregation. "Everything's just huge masses of granite blocks, and everything's outsized. It might look good on a drawing, but it doesn't seem to apply to human life," said Hynde.

The conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh uses the opening riff of this song as theme music for his radio show. Limbaugh and Hynde have radically different political views, but she cannot stop him from using the song as long as the show continues to pay royalties.

This was released as the B-side of "Back On The Chain Gang."