Thursday, December 20, 2012

Pretenders - 2000 Miles

"2000 Miles" came out in late 1983, just before the Learning to Crawl LP, which was released in January, 1984.  While the song does reference Christmastime, it is not a traditional Christmas song, and in fact was initially thought to be an anti-war song (in the aftermath of the Falklands war).

Subsequently, Chrissie Hynde has stated that the song is a tribute to her friend and former bandmate, James Honeyman-Scott, who died the previous year.  In any event, the result is a wonderful, haunting song, and one of our holiday favorites.  The song also gets the nob for being "the single most depressing Christmas standard of all time" according to Allmusic.

"2000 Miles" was a hit in the UK when it was released, hitting #15 in December 1983.  It was not released as a single in the U.S., although it was the B side of "Middle of the Road."  Learning to Crawl ended up being the most successful Pretenders album in the U.S. by chart position -- it peaked at #5.

The video is good cheesy fun.  It was not played much back in the day and remains a somewhat rare video to this day.


Note that "Day After Day" was also posted at ERV, last December.

4 comments:

  1. Merry Christmas
    And A Happy New Year
    Rawk On
    Love Your Site
    =Sam

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Sam, and the same to you and yours (and to anyone else reading this).

      Delete
  2. you're damn right it's a rare video to be played and superbly geeky too!
    Wonderful,beguiling,intriguing,I mean ,the Salvation army uniform,the trapped miners,the polar bear playing the icicles and the slightly mad looking ice fisherman,they just don't make 'em like this anymore!
    and the best bit,it wasn't released as a single in the USA :)

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  3. I've been looking for the original video for a long time (it's impossible to find on youtube) so thanks!

    ReplyDelete