Songfacts®:

• Barry Manilow closed out his 1989 self-titled album with this lonely number about being homesick while on tour. According to the liner notes of his 1992 anthology, The Complete Collection And Then Some, he composed the melody on an out-of-tune upright piano at a private home that was rented for him to stay in during a gig.
  
  "I was homesick and very into self-pity at the time," he recalled. "The road will do that to you now and then."
  
  While Manilow was on the road, he kept in contact with his longtime songwriting partners, Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman, so they could work long distance. During one particular conversation, they could sense something was up.
  
  "Bruce and I could hear a wistfulness in his voice, the slight ache of homesickness that we've all felt, but that we may not always associate with the 'glamorous show business life,'" Feldman explained. "This song was inspired by all those long-distance collaborations."
• Feldman credits Eddie Arkin's "evocative and masterful arrangement" for bringing the song to life. Arkin also arranged Manilow's Swing Street single "Brooklyn Blues" and co-wrote the 1987 album's track "Big Fun."
• All three of the song's writers are American, but they chose to spell "traveling" the standard UK way with two Ls. In the US, one L is correct.