In praise of songs about distance

Distance in song is measured in the hours from your lover's arms, in the cities that pass and the emptiness you leave behindI suppose it was the Proclaimers who began it. It was the summer of 1988, and for weeks they seemed to be everywhere, two gawky men in thick glasses, singing I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles). I was 10 years old and I loved that song, loved all its dreaming and drinking and havering, loved its sweet, rousing chorus: "I would walk 500 miles/ And I would walk 500 more/ Just to be th...

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