Glenn Tillbrook said of the song, "It's slightly grandiose-sounding, which is not my cup of tea really. On the whole it's not a bad version.It's a bit like Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run'. And yet another song about drinking." Chris Difford said, "'I've Returned' could have been on East Side Story. It's a lyric that reflects our early writing, so I suppose we were beginning to repeat ourselves. We were cocooned in a web of touring and it was suffocating our skills. We didn't have any time to observe.

The song also was a popular live number at the time. "We used to do this as the first number in the set, to replace 'In Quintessence'."

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