I always like to give songwriting credit where credit is do. And in the case of both the writing and producing of this song, that goes to George Shadow Morton (1941-2013), a 24-year-old New Yorker whose work with the girl group The Shangri-Las never was given the true credit it deserved. He co-wrote Leader Of The Pack with Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Berry and he solely wrote Remember (Walking In The Sand) and Give Him A Great Big Kiss for the girls. But his most powerful composition was I Can Never Go Home Anymore, a gut-wrenching tale of a girl who defiantly leaves her mom to go out in the world with the boys she loves, loses the boy and is then too proud to admit shes wrong and come back home. Sung lead on by Mary Weiss, it ends with the powerful line that her mom grew so lonely in the end/the angels picked her for their friend. I Can Never Go Home Anymore powered up 19 places from No. 31 to No. 12 on November 23, 1965, peaking at No. 6 a month later, the last big hit for the New York-based group.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 21:50:38 +0000