Three Days Grace released “Home” to U.S. rock radio on October 4, 2004, as the third single from their self-titled debut album. Following “I Hate Everything About You” and “Just Like You,” the song focused on the loneliness of being surrounded by people who offer little support.
Drummer Neil Sanderson described that feeling in an October 2004 interview with MTV. “Home” was about being “pushed around and neglected,” he said, and finding that other people’s physical presence did not mean they were actually there for you. He connected the subject to the band’s experiences growing up in Norwood, Ontario, and the treatment they encountered after moving to a larger city.
The band had spent years developing material before those experiences reached a major-label album. Adam Gontier told Florida Entertainment Scene in 2004 that the debut’s songs had been written over roughly a decade, followed by about six months of recording. Producer Gavin Brown worked with the trio of Gontier on vocals and guitar, Brad Walst on bass and Sanderson on drums. Their album, Three Days Grace, arrived in 2003.
Brown helped the band reconsider how their ideas fit together. In a 2006 Ultimate Guitar interview, Gontier explained that they already had music written when they met the producer, whose contribution included a different perspective on where parts should go. “Home” offered a specific example. Its heavy opening riff was in place, but the band and Brown felt it needed another melody above it. They tried different lead parts in the studio until they found the high guitar line heard in the introduction.
That sound came from a Whammy pedal. Gontier said he played around the 12th fret and used the effect to shift the part an octave higher. The extra pitch came from the pedal, allowing the lead to sit above the underlying riff.
The song also became a personal favorite to perform. Asked to choose a track from the debut in his Florida Entertainment Scene interview, Gontier singled out “Home” for the energy the band put into it onstage. “It hits a spot with me,” he said. He described live performance as a central reason the musicians had stayed together, with the chance to play in a different city each night part of what they had wanted from the beginning.
Director Dean Karr gave the single a haunted setting for its video. The band announced in September 2004 that filming was complete. Sanderson told MTV they had worked inside a condemned building he described as containing asbestos, with a creature haunting the place where they performed. He said the imagery connected directly to the lyrics.
By November, the band was directing fans to the video on Fuse and MTV2. On January 24, 2005, Three Days Grace announced that “Home” had reached No. 1 on MuchMusic’s countdown, thanking the fans who had requested it.
