The Hotel He Never Wanted to Stay In
June 08, 2025
Hotel California wasn’t just a song for my dad. It was a warning. A mirror. A truth he felt in his bones long before I understood it.
Some songs give you answers.
Hotel California gave my dad a mirror.
He never talked about it directly.
Not in the way people unpack lyrics or meanings.
But when it came on, I saw it in his face —
a stillness,
a weight,
a knowing.
It wasn’t just music.
It was memory.
Maybe even grief.
“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
I think that line haunted him.
Not because he feared it —
but because he understood it.
He knew what it was like to be stuck.
To live in a world that looked “fine” from the outside —
but was hollow.
Loveless.
A place that praised appearances,
but punished feeling.
I wonder if he thought of his mother.
The way she scrimped and saved.
Held onto control.
Clung to security like it would save her from the ache she refused to feel.
He saw through that.
Saw the cost of living like that —
the way it can steal your soul without ever raising its voice.
And Hotel California gave that pain a shape.
For my dad, I don’t think the song was about excess.
It was about entrapment.
About the kind of life you end up in without realising —
where freedom looks like success,
and numbness is worn like pride.
But more than that…
I think it reminded him he didn’t want that life.
That he’d do whatever he could not to raise his children in it.
That he’d take the quiet road.
Even if it meant being misunderstood.
Because he’d already stayed too long in that hotel.
And maybe… in his own quiet way…
he helped me leave it before I ever walked in.