When I Get Back to the U.S.A.

Lyrics and Music: Irving Berlin [Download the mp3]

I’ve been on the go for a month or so,
Now my heart begins to yearn
For the U.S.A., many miles away,
And I’m anxious to return.
I have been around, covered lots of ground,
But it don’t appeal to me
Seeing sights abroad is an awful fraud,
I’m as homesick as can be.

When I get back home again to the U.S.A.
In the land of peace and freedom, I intend to stay,
Somehow I never feel at home when I’m away from there, anywhere,
No other nation in this creation would ever do for me.
I guess I’m cranky, ’cause I’m a yankee,
But then I’m proud to be.
On the pier you’ll hear me shouting Hip, Hip, Hooray,
When I get back to the U.S.A.

My country! ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountain side
Let freedom ring

There is not a thing in the song I sing,
That has not been sung before;
It’s a story old, that has oft been told
In a thousand songs or more.
But when I salam to my Uncle Sam
In the good old U.S.A.,
It is not because I would ask applause,
But because I feel that way.