I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)

"I'm Gonna Be"
Song

"I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" is a song written and performed by Scottish pop band The Proclaimers. It was released on their 1988 Sunshine on Leith album, and subsequently as a single. It has become one of their most popular songs, reaching No. 11 in the UK charts and No. 1 on the Australian ARIA Charts in 1989, plus, five years later, No. 3 in the US Billboard Hot 100. The song has become a live staple at their concerts. The Proclaimers played it at Edinburgh 50,000 - The Final Push, the final concert of Live 8 at Murrayfield Stadium on 6 July 2005, to symbolise the conclusion of The Long Walk To Justice.

The song is popular in Scotland, where at Hampden Park, every time the national football team scores, the song is played and sung along to by Scotland fans. This also occurs at Murrayfield Stadium when the Scotland rugby union team scores a try, and Easter Road Stadium when Hibernian - the team The Proclaimers support - score. The song receives a similar kind of following at darts events when played as a "walk on" tune for Scottish player Robert Thornton. It was featured on the soundtrack to the 1993 film Benny & Joon, when one of the film's stars, Mary Stuart Masterson, kept on playing Sunshine on Leith while filming the movie and the filmmakers took special notice of this song in particular. As a result the original music video was re-edited with clips from the film. The inclusion of the song on the popular film helped popularize the song in the United States, where it is mistakenly but commonly regarded as a 1990s song, despite being recorded and released in 1988.

In 2006, the song was featured as a cutaway gag on the Family Guy season 4 episode "You May Now Kiss the... Uh... Guy Who Receives". The song was also the theme song for the Swedish TV-show, High Chaparall. It was also featured repeatedly in the How I Met Your Mother episode "Arrivederci, Fiero" as a "cassingle" of the song becomes stuck in the tape deck of Marshall Eriksen's Pontiac Fiero, and remains there for the duration of 1994 to 2007. It was featured once again in How I Met Your Mother in the Season 5 episode "Duel Citizenship" as the roadtrip music for Ted and Marshall. It was also played over the end credits of the 2010 film Burke and Hare. The song has also been associated with Terry Fox's walk for cancer. On September 11, 2010, Matthew Wilkening of AOL Radio ranked the original version of the song at #50 on the list of the 100 Worst Songs Ever, exclaiming, "We're halfway through our list! Doesn't it feel like your ears have walked through 500 miles of bad songs?" In October 2010, the song was played during the Glasgow 2014 handover section of the closing ceremony of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. In the book I Am The Messenger , the main character listens to this song during hurting another character.

The cover of this song by Steven Curtis Chapman was played by NASA as the wakeup call to the crew of the International Space Station and STS-130 on Flight Day 14/15.

Track listing

Original 1988 version

1. "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)"
2. "Better Days"
3. "Teardrops"

The song was used in a Molson Canadian commercial.

Charts

End of year chart (1993)	Position
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	27

Covers

• Scotsman George Donaldson of Celtic Thunder, on their 2009 album Take Me Home
• Alexander Rybak, on his 2009 album Fairytales
• MXPX, on their 2009 album On The Cover II.
• Down By Law, on their album Punkrockacademyfightsong.
• Spunge on their covers album That Should Cover It!.
• Koopa, as a B-side on their single "No Trend".
• Toy Dolls, on their album One More Megabyte.
• Steven Curtis Chapman, on his album All About Love.
• Phish, on 30 December 1997 at Madison Square Garden with Tom Marshall.
• The MacDonald Brothers, on The X Factor.
• Maxïmo Park, live on Jo Whiley's Live Lounge for BBC Radio 1.
• Najwa Nimri, on her album Walkabout.
• In 2010, the song was parodied by The Fringemunks to recap Fringe episode 2.17, "White Tulip".
• The Flying Pickets.
• Vlogger Hank Green performed a cover of this song in 2007 as a punishment from his brother.

Comic Relief

The Proclaimers re-recorded the song, with Peter Kay and Matt Lucas, the latter two in the guise of their characters Brian Potter and Andy Pipkin (from Phoenix Nights and Little Britain respectively). There is a slight change in the lyrics with the words "roll 500 miles" replacing "walk 500 miles". This is because the characters Brian Potter and Andy Pipkin are both in wheelchairs. There is also the line "Bobby Davro" included in time with the music, because Brian Potter spots Bobby in the audience. This version was released as a charity single for Comic Relief on 19 March 2007. It reached No. 3 on the official UK Singles Chart on download sales alone, and one week later reached No. 1, where it remained for three weeks. It sold 126,000 copies in its first week making it the biggest selling number one of the year up to that point. Its sales were double that of the "official" Comic Relief single by Girls Aloud vs. Sugababes, and their cover of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way". The song ended 2007 as the year's 9th biggest-selling single in the UK.

The Proclaimers' original recording also re-entered the Top 40 following the success of the Comic Relief version.