Songfacts®:

• The Kid Laroi wrote this brooding song as a warning to his girlfriend after he first met her. Though the rapper really likes her, he fears their relationship will be another one he messes up, leaving her hurt. She tells the girl if he was her, he'd "stay a thousand miles away."
  
  "I couldn't give her the relationship she deserved due to the direction my life was heading," he said, "being young as hell, trying to chase the dream I had of being a big artist or whatever."
• Laroi admits finding it hard to give up the romance. He tries in vain to block her out of his thoughts, but she's got "ten fingers wrapped around" his heart.
• When The Kid Laroi released the self-bashing anthem on April 22, 2022, he revealed his girlfriend hadn't heeded his advice. She's still going out with him and their relationship is "going pretty well." The Aussie teenager was dating social media and TikTok personality Katarina Deme at the time, so clearly she's the subject of "Thousand Miles."
• The Kid Laroi wrote "Thousand Miles" with Canadian singer-songwriter Billy Walsh and and LA producers Louis Bell and Andrew Watt. Walsh and Bell are Post Malone's go-to songwriting partners and have also worked with 5 Seconds of Summer ("Old Me") and Camila Cabello ("Real Friends"). Walsh also previously co-wrote the Australian artist's "Without You" single.
  
  Andrew Watt frequently teams up with Louis Bell, including on hit songs for Camila Cabello ("Havana"),Miley Cyrus ("Midnight Sky"), and Justin Bieber ("Peaches").
  
  "Watt just had this guitar idea that he had made and he just pulled it up, and I just started ripping it at his house on the mic," Kid Laroi told Apple Music's Zane Lowe.
• The Kid Laroi first teased lyrics from the song in 2021 and performed it at his live shows. A week before its release, the rapper posted a 10-second TikTok video of himself playing a snippet of the song:
  
  Here goes another mistake I know I'm gonna make
  I know I'm gonna make tonight
  And I will never change
  
  Laroi encouraged fans to share their own "last mistake" while photos of his former manager Scooter Braun flashed across the screen. The post left some fans confused whether or not the TikTok was serious but it turned out to be a prank. To prove it was a pre-planned wind-up, the rapper posted screenshots of him and Braun lol-ing at their joke.
• The Christian Breslauer-directed video shows Laroi facing off with an evil version of himself. His alter ego attempts to sabotage his attempts to win over the affections of a girl, played by Katarina Deme.
• Singer-songwriter Vanessa Carlton had a huge hit with "A Thousand Miles" in 2002. However, while Laroi's song finds him urging his girl "to stay a thousand miles away" from him, Carlton would "walk a thousand miles" just to be with her love interest.