A Better Place to Be

"A Better Place to Be"
Single by Harry Chapin
from the album Sniper and Other Love Songs
ReleasedOctober 1972
Recorded1972
GenreFolk rock
Length8:36
LabelElektra
Songwriter(s)Harry Chapin
Producer(s)Fred Kewley
Harry Chapin singles chronology
"Sunday Morning Sunshine"
(1972)
"A Better Place to Be"
(1972)
"W.O.L.D."
(1973)

"A Better Place to Be" is a song by Harry Chapin from his 1972 album, Sniper and Other Love Songs. The song is about a midnight watchman confiding in a waitress, while drinking gin, about a woman that he met a week before and had a one-night stand with.

Released as a single, the song reached No. 18 on the Billboard Bubbling Under chart. A live version, from the 1976 album Greatest Stories Live, reached No. 86 on the Hot 100 chart.

Record World called it a "distinctive Chapin narrative, this time a downbeat tale about two lonely people."[1]

According to Chapin, it was his favorite song that he wrote.

  1. ^ "Single Picks" (PDF). Record World. December 9, 1972. p. 10. Retrieved 2023-03-27.