"We Gotta Get out of This Place", occasionally written "We've Gotta Get out of This Place", is a rock song written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and recorded as a 1965 hit single by The Animals. It has become an iconic song of its type and was immensely popular among United States Armed Forces during the Vietnam War.
In The Animals' rendition, the lyrics were slightly reordered and reworded from the demo, and opened with what seemed to be a reference to their industrial, working class Northern England origins:
In this dirty old heart of the city
Where the sun refused to shine
People tell me, there ain't no use in tryin'
Next comes a verse about the singer's father at the end of his life with little to show for it, followed by one of The Animals' call-and-response buildups, finally leading through delayed tension to the well-known chorus:
We gotta get out of this place!
If it's the last thing we ever do ...
We gotta get out of this place,
'cause girl, there's a better life ... for me and you
At the time, the title and simple emotional appeal of "We Gotta Get out of This Place" lent itself to some obvious self-identifications. More notably, the song was very popular with United States Armed Forces members stationed in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It was frequently requested of, and played by, American Forces Vietnam Network disc jockeys. During 2006 two University of Wisconsin–Madison employees, one a Vietnam veteran, began an in-depth survey of hundreds of Vietnam veterans, and found that "We Gotta Get out of This Place" had resonated the strongest among all the music popular then: "We had absolute unanimity is this song being the touchstone. This was the Vietnam anthem. Every bad band that ever played in an armed forces club had to play this song." In America it was used as the title credits song in some episodes of the Vietnam-war-set television series China Beach.
"We Gotta Get Out Of This Place"
In this dirty old part of the city
Where the sun refused to shine
People tell me there ain't no use in tryin'
Now my girl you're so young and pretty
And one thing I know is true
You'll be dead before your time is due, I know
Watch my daddy in bed a-dyin'
Watched his hair been turnin' grey
He's been workin' and slavin' his life away
Oh yes I know it
He's been workin' so hard, yeah
I've been workin' too, baby, yeah
Every night and day, yeah
We gotta get out of this place
If it's the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
Cause girl, there's a better life for me and you
Now my girl you're so young and pretty
And one thing I know is true, yeah
You'll be dead before your time is due, I know it
Watch my daddy in bed a-dyin'
Watched his hair been turnin' grey, yeah
He's been workin' and slavin' his life away
I know he's been workin' so hard
I've been workin' too, baby, yeah
Every day baby, yeah
Wow, yeah...
We gotta get out of this place
If it's the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
Girl, there's a better life for me and you
Somewhere baby, somehow I know it
We gotta get out of this place
If it's the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
Girl, there's a better life for me and you
Believe me baby, I know it baby
You know it too
