“All Signs Point to Lauderdale,” one of the most well known songs from A Day To Remember, speaks a message a lot of us can relate too. The main message of the song is feeling like you don't belong where you are and just wanting to get away from everything and everybody there, escaping from this place where you feel trapped. I know from my own experience that most of my life was counting the years, months and days till I could finally leave.
As I moved into my dorm freshman year of college I had no idea what I was in for. Not just homesickness but so much more than I had ever expected. It was a lot of work and I was stressed every second of it.
I remember coming home for winter break and never wanting to leave my room or town ever again, a place that I had looked forward my entire life to get out of. Maybe it was the comfort of home and a familiar place after a long and hard semester that made me so happy, or had I actually developed a real appreciation of my hometown? Possibly both, but at that moment I had never been more thankful to be where I was from.
In the TV show, Friday Night Lights character Julie Taylor is clearly jaded toward her hometown of Dillon Texas right from the beginning. By the close of the show she is off to college and reflects that she was glad that she came from Dillon, a town that was all about high school football because it gave her a one-of-a-kind view on life she would not have found anywhere else. Julie was finally able to see how important that was when going out into the world with so many people from so many different places.
During this past summer, I had never felt a greater appreciation for my hometown of Middletown, NJ. I got to move home for a bit and it was wonderful. After being at college for a year and meeting new people from new places I was glad to be where I was from. Even after years of hating it. It has shaped the person I became and I am grateful for that.
After years on the road, I think Jeremy Mckinnon of A Day to Remember would agree with me that he too has developed a greater appreciation of his hometown since the band wrote “All Signs Point to Lauderdale.” The music video for “City of Ocala” shows the band reminiscing on memories of their hometown, both good and bad. It’s a part of they are, as people, as musicians, and it shows specifically in this song, reflecting lyrically and physically in the music video.
So no matter how you feel about your hometown, it has influenced your life more than you know and we should appreciate that. Could you have imagined growing up somewhere else? Personally I could not, and after everything I went through in high school and growing up I wouldn't chose to have it any other way.
