by Patty Griffin · 2024
The song “Long Ride Home” by Patty Griffin is about someone reflecting with regret and sorrow on the end of a long marriage while returning home alone after their spouse’s funeral.
This song has been Shazamed over 47,513 times. As of this writing, Long Ride Home is ranked 94
Long Ride Home’ by Patty Griffin is a beautiful song that tells a story about love, regret, and memories after someone has passed away. We’re going to break down what makes this song so special and why its words stick with us. ⬇️
The music feels hushed, almost like twilight settling in, wrapping listeners in a gentle, mournful embrace. Griffin’s lyrics weave a story of a woman reflecting on a lifetime as she rides home from her partner’s funeral, her heart heavy with sorrow and unfinished conversations.
In the chorus—“I’ve had some time to think about it / And watch the sun sink like a stone”—we’re pulled into a slow, aching spiral of regret and longing. The repetition echoes the weight of memories, the way thoughts loop endlessly on lonely car rides, especially after loss. We sense the narrator’s ache, her desire to reach back in time, and maybe say something kinder, anything to soften the sharp edges of goodbye.
️ The verses are where the bones of the story lie: “Forty years go by with someone laying in your bed / Forty years of things you say you wish you’d never said.” Griffin’s imagery is startlingly honest, painting marriage as both comfort and a minefield, full of unspoken words and everyday choices that add up. The small details—a wedding band slipped on, land given by a father, a house grown silent—remind us how life’s biggest truths hide in the ordinary, while the narrator’s regrets ripple through every line.
️ By the time we reach the dark, empty house—“all is silent / And seems as empty as the inside of me”—the sense of aloneness is bone-deep. The headlights, the quiet, the emptiness; these are the echoes of a life now haunted by everything unsaid, all the kindness withheld, the gentle words that never found their way out.
Sometimes, Patty Griffin seems to whisper that the long ride home isn’t just a journey through grief, but a reckoning with the simple, missed chances for love that shape our lives forever.
Writer(s) of Long Ride Home:
