“Can’t Go Home Again” aches like a postcard you never send—proof that the past can still feel like an address, even after it stops being a place.
Some songs don’t arrive with a spotlight; they arrive like a late thought, the kind that catches you off guard when the room is quiet. David Cassidy’s “Can’t Go Home Again” is one of those recordings—gentle on the surface, but emotionally complicated underneath. It’s a song about the cruel arithmetic of time: how you can return to the streets, the names, the familiar corners, and still discover that what you’re really longing for isn’t there anymore—because it isn’t a there. It’s a then.
The key facts, placed up front and clean: “Can’t Go Home Again” first appeared in the marketplace as the B-side of Cassidy’s single “Daydream” on Bell Records, cataloged as Bell 45-386, released July 5, 1973. It was not promoted as an A-side and there is no separate chart run for the B-side in the major UK/US listings—its life was largely the life of a “flip”: found by listeners who turned the record over and stayed a little longer.
A few months later, the song took its proper place on Cassidy’s third solo album, Dreams Are Nuthin’ More Than Wishes (released October 1973), where “Can’t Go Home Again” appears on Side Two. The songwriting credit is especially telling: Dave Ellingson, David Cassidy, and Kim Carnes. (Yes—Kim Carnes, years before her own era-defining pop success, is right there in the DNA of this track.) On paper, that’s a simple credit line; in practice, it hints at something more personal than a standard “picked” pop tune. It suggests Cassidy reaching for authorship, trying to put fingerprints—his own—on the stories he was singing.
If you’re looking for “ranking at release,” the truth is slightly indirect, but still meaningful. “Can’t Go Home Again” didn’t chart as a single; it wasn’t given the chance to. But the album it lived on became a major event in one of Cassidy’s most devoted territories: Dreams Are Nuthin’ More Than Wishes reached No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart and stayed on the chart for 13 weeks, spending one week at No. 1. So the song’s “moment” wasn’t measured in a Hot 100 peak—it was measured in something quieter: being part of a record that, for a time, sat at the very top of Britain’s listening life.
Now, the heart of the song.
“Can’t Go Home Again” isn’t just about a hometown. It’s about that specific heartbreak of realizing that “home” is a moving target. People change. Buildings disappear. Old friendships harden into polite memories. Even you—especially you—aren’t who you were when “home” first meant safety. The title line carries a hard-earned wisdom, but it’s not delivered like a lecture. It’s delivered like a sigh you’ve held in too long.
What makes Cassidy’s performance so affecting is that he doesn’t oversell it. There’s a tenderness in the vocal—an almost careful handling of the lyric, as if pressing too hard might crack something. That restraint is crucial. This song doesn’t want dramatics; it wants recognition. It wants that quiet moment when you admit, to yourself, that you’re not only missing a place—you’re missing a version of life that can’t be restored, no matter how faithfully you retrace the route.
Placed as a B-side first, “Can’t Go Home Again” feels almost symbolic: it’s the song behind the song, the private thought behind the public face. In 1973, Cassidy was still surrounded by the noise of fame—yet here is a track that turns away from noise and looks inward. Not for spectacle, but for truth.
And maybe that’s why it stays with you. Because everyone, sooner or later, learns the same lesson—sometimes gently, sometimes all at once: you can go back… but you can’t go back there. “Can’t Go Home Again” doesn’t fight that reality. It simply gives it a melody, and in doing so, offers a strange kind of comfort—the comfort of being understood.