Sunny Came Home

The song is undoubtedly about escaping from domestic abuse, it's not metaphorical. The whole tone of the song is also filled with tension, unnerving, yet strangely cathartic.

Here's how I see it: a mother in a small town getting beaten and probably raped regularly by her husband for years. ("Count the years, you always knew it")

Yet she hasn't left because it's the only world she knows. She's scared of him, yet she's more scared of how she (and her kids) will get by without him. The problem might be compounded by small-town mentality as well. Religious perceptions that a woman is nothing without her man, parents worried more about looking bad to other people than their daughter's well-being, general red-neck chauvinism, etc. So she bore it all silently. On the outside everyone else just sees her as a meek non-person, but inside she's slowly going crazy. ("She says days go by I'm hypnotized, I'm walking on a wire, I close my eyes and fly out of my mind, Into the fire")

Then one day after coming home from her latest stay at the hospital (for getting beaten up of course), she decides she's finally had enough. (the "Sunny came home" refrain)

She sets the house on fire, grabs her kids and runs away. ("Get the kids and bring a sweater, Dry is good and wind is better")

One thing the song only hints about though, is if whether she killed anyone in the process or not. She might or might not have killed him. ("She didn't believe in transcendence")

It's a happy song I guess. It's about finally asserting yourself and leaving all the things that hurt you. The last line is positive: ("She's out there on her own and she's alright")

Granted, I also acknowledge that the problem may not have been an abusive husband (though it's the most likely, given that the song indicates she has kids). It may also be molestation, bad memories of a hometown, or huge guilt over something. The only thing we're sure of is she escaped, but not without destroying the thing that almost destroyed her.