The Beatles - She's Leaving Home Lyrics

The Beatles Lyrics

"She's Leaving Home"

Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key
Stepping outside she is free

She (We gave her most of our lives)
Is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)
Home (We gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years (Bye bye)

Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband "Daddy our baby's gone
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?
How could she do this to me?"

She (We never thought of ourselves)
Is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves)
Home (We struggled hard all our lives to get by)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years (Bye bye)

Friday morning at nine o'clock she is far away
Waiting to keep the appointment she made
Meeting a man from the motor trade

She (What did we do that was wrong)
Is having (We didn't know it was wrong)
Fun (Fun is the one thing that money can't buy)
Something inside that was always denied
For so many years (Bye bye)

She's leaving home
Bye bye

Submit Corrections

Thanks to Xavier Philpot for correcting these lyrics.

Writer(s): Paul McCartney, John Lennon

This song was inspired by a true event when a seventeen-year-old girl left her parents' house and ran away. Paul McCartney read an article "A-Level Girl Dumps Car And Vanishes" in London Daily Mirror on the 27th of February 1967. He actually met her during the TV show "Ready Steady Go!" in 1963.

Melanie Coe, the girl this song is about, told in an interview for The Guardian in 2008, "I didn't realize for a long time that the song was about me. Years later Paul was on a program talking about how he'd seen a newspaper article and been inspired by it. My mother pieced it all together and called me to say, 'That song's about you!'."

The band members didn't play on this song. All instruments were done by a session string orchestra, and a harp was played by Sheila Bromberg, the first female to play on a Beatles album.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney received the Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for this song in 1967.