Shawn Colvin Songs - Sunny Came Home Lyrics

Shawn Colvin - Sunny Came Home

Shawn Colvin - Sunny Came Home Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: A Few Small Repairs
Released: 1997

Sunny Came Home Lyrics

Sunny Came Home to her favorite room
Sunny sat down in the kitchen
She opened a book and a box of tools
Sunny came home with a mission
She says days go by I'm hypnotized
I'm walking on a wire
I close my eyes and fly out of my mind
Into the fire
Sunny came home with a list of names
She didn't believe in transcendence
It's time for a few small repairs she said
Sunny came home with a vengeance
She says days go by I don't know why
I'm walking on a wire
I close my eyes and fly out of my mind
Into the fire
Get the kids and bring a sweater
Dry is good and wind is better
Count the years, you always knew it
Strike a match, go on and do it
Oh days go by I'm hypnotized
I'm walking on a wire
I close my eyes and fly out of my mind
Into the fire
Oh light the sky and hold on tight
The world is burning down
She's out there on her own and she's alright
Sunny came home
Sunny came home

Writer/s: COLVIN, SHAWN/LEVENTHAL, JOHN B.
Publisher: Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC, WARNER CHAPPELL MUSIC INC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Sunny Came Home

This song is about a woman who "Makes a few repairs" to the oven, then uses the gases to burn her house down by lighting a match. She does this in an attempt to escape her past.

Colvin was inspired by a painting, which she used on the cover of the album. The artist was a friend of Colvin's, Julie Speed. See the painting in Song Images .

Before A Few Small Repairs, Colvin had never written songs about characters - they were always in the first person. She said the record was fun to make in part because she was "feeling comfortable enough to write a story instead of all the songs being so personal."

Colvin was born January 10, 1956 in South Dakota. She taught herself guitar by age 10 and got her break singing backup for Suzanne Vega. (thanks, Crystal - Springfield, MO, for all above)

Colvin's songwriting partner on this and many of her other songs was John Leventhal - he writes the music and she writes the lyrics. Leventhal is married to Colvin's good friend Rosanne Cash. (thanks, John - Stony Point, NY)

This won Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 1998 ceremony. When she won for Song of the Year, rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard rushed the stage and took the microphone. Apparently upset that his group, Wu-Tang Clan, lost Best Rap Album to Puff Daddy, he rambled about how "Wu Tang is for the children" before he was ushered offstage and a very confused Colvin was allowed to give her speech.

It was Colvin's producer John Leventhal who came up with the iconic mandolin riff that starts out the song. She explained to American Songwriter magazine: "We're longtime writing partners and our co-writing almost always works the same way, which is he has some music already written and I create melody and lyrics to it. Every now and then I'll get a set of lyrics without music or I'll write a bridge or something in a piece of music he's already got but generally he gives me music, I finish it out. That's what happened with 'Sunny Came Home,' he had a whole piece of music and no words and no melody and I came up with that."