Songfacts®:

• The Plimsouls built a legend with a six-year run starting in 1979 and ending when they broke up on New Year's Eve, 1985. They were fronted by Peter Case, who went on to a fruitful solo career.
  
  "Oldest Story In The World" is one of their most popular songs. Written by Case, it tells the tale of a girl who burns her bridges and comes to regret it.
• Steve Hunter, who played on tracks by Alice Cooper, Aerosmith and Peter Gabriel, played acoustic guitar on this song.
• The Plimsouls perform "Oldest Story In The World" and "A Million Miles Away" in a club scene in the 1983 movie Valley Girl. In the scene, the girls leave the Valley and experience the seedier side of Los Angeles. Their tastes lead toward Madonna, so they don't appreciate the music. One of the locals sets them straight, telling them, "This music's got emotion, power."
• Peter Case was in a punkish band called The Nerves before forming The Plimsouls, which made music for a broader swath of listeners. "When The Nerves broke up, I wanted to start a band that took the kind of songwriting desire we had and make it a band that could just blow the roof off a place," he said in a Songfacts interview. "So that's what we did with The Plimsouls, and it became much more rock and roll."