I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)
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"I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" is a song written and performed by The Proclaimers. It was released on their 1988 Sunshine on Leith album, and subsequently as a single. It has become their most popular song, reaching No. 11 in the UK charts and No. 1 on the Australian ARIA Charts in 1989, and No. 3 in the United States Billboard Hot 100 in 1993 when the song appeared in the film Benny & Joon. 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".
Popular culture
In 2007, Alvin and the Chipmunks covered the song, with minor lyric changes, for their video game Alvin and the Chipmunks.
At the end of the fourth series of the new Doctor Who, a video of the cast and crew of the show (as well as The Proclaimers themselves) singing and dancing along to the song was released, as a farewell to David Tennant, Russell T. Davies, and other key players in the show's development; hailing the shift into the Steven Moffat era of the show.
The song was also very popular in Spain in the late 1990s thanks to TV advertisements. It was a reference song for the ads of Retevisión, one of the first private telecommunications companies in Spain.[1]
On 11 September 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?"[2]
The song is also featured on the How I Met Your Mother episode "Arrivederci, Fiero," in which it is revealed that the character Marshall has had a cassette tape with the song on it stuck in his car for years. Commentary on the song's unlimited replay value follows.
The song is featured in the movies Bachelorette, Identity Thief, Benny & Joon and Burke and Hare. It is also featured in the movie The Angels' Share directed by Ken Loach, which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.
A remix of the song with David Guetta's Titanium is featured in Pitch Perfect.
In 2013, Randall Munroe calculated on his blog What If that, because the original version of the song is approximately 213 seconds long, and the International Space Station orbits the Earth at ~4.76 miles per second (7.66 km/s),[3] an astronaut listening to the song on the ISS would have travelled very nearly exactly 1,000 miles from beginning the song til its end. [4]
Track listing
Original 1988 version
- "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)"
- "Better Days"
- "Teardrops"
Uses other media in children's TV shows
A Bob the Builder version of the song is about the gang, who would try five hundred more in his second album Never Mind the Breeze Blocks.
In the Roary the Racing Car episode "Roary's Wake Up Call," Big Chris sings over the backing track whilst working in the workshop.
In the Fifi and the Flowertots episode "Mystery in Flowertot Garden," Fifi sings 3 verses over the backing track of the song while she and her Flowertot friends are getting their garden ready.
References
- ^ Retevision - Spot telefono a las estrellas (1998 ad)
- ^ Wilkening, Matthew (11 September 2010). "100 Worst Songs Ever -- Part Three of Five". AOL Radio. Retrieved 22 December 2010.
- ^ http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/index.html
- ^ Orbital Speed, Randall Munroe. Retrieved 25 August 2013
External links