The Proclaimers are the Scottish twins Craig and Charlie Reid. "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" is their only hit in America, but four of their other songs made the UK Top 40, including their first hit, "Letter From America," which went to #3 in 1987.
This song is about being devoted to a woman and wanting to spend the rest of your life with her. And it's all sung in a Scottish accent.
In the line "I'm gonna be the one who's havering for you," "havering" means babbling on. Some US radio stations took caution and didn't play the song until they were sure "havering" didn't mean something naughty.
"I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" was written in 1988 and released that year on The Proclaimers' second album, Sunshine On Leith. It topped the charts in Australia, Iceland and New Zealand, and went to #11 in the UK, but in America it was a mere curio, getting scattered airplay on college radio. That changed in 1993 when it was used in the opening scene of Benny & Joon, and oddly charming movie starring Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson. The film was far from a blockbuster, but many who saw it sought out the song. Radio stations and MTV started playing it, and it was re-released as a single, this time climbing to #3 after a fittingly long journey.
Craig and Charlie Reid wrote the bulk of the song while they were sitting in a flat in Edinburgh waiting for a lift to a gig in Aberdeen.
Craig Reid in the Daily Mail, March 23, 2007: "I can remember sitting at the piano and the chords just came to me. I reckon I just wrote the whole thing in 45 minutes. I knew that it was a good song, maybe even a single, but I had no idea how popular it would become."
The song was included in Benny & Joon thanks to the film's director, Jeremiah Chechik, who asked Mary Stuart Masterson to bring in some of her favorite records to play for inspiration in the opening scene where she's painting. One of them was the "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" single, and when it played, Chechik decided it should be in the film.
"Man, this is too perfect," he said. "A romantic song about someone who will walk a thousand miles, act crazy, do anything for true love." (Quote from a 1993 Q magazine story on the band.)
The song took off in America at an opportune time for The Proclaimers. After releasing it on their 1988 album Sunshine On Leith, they caught a bad case of writers' block, and by 1993 still hadn't released their next album. When "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" became a surprise hit, they went to America to help promote it by playing clubs and doing radio station showcases. Not only did the single take off, the album Sunshine On Leith sold 500,000 copies there, earning it Gold certification. Their next album, Hit The Highway, finally arrived in 1994.
This song was adopted as a theme song by Hibernian Football Club in Scotland.
In March 2007 The Proclaimers teamed up with British comedians Peter Kay and Matt Lucas to release a new version for the charity Comic Relief, which topped the UK charts. Peter Kay stars as his wheelchair bound character the Phoenix Club boss Brian Potter and Matt Lucas in turn appears as his similarly wheelchair bound Little Britain character Andy Pipkin. The comedians duet on the first 2 verses of the song before the Proclaimers take over.
The original version returned to the British chart at #37 the same week the Comic Relief version entered the chart at #3 making The Proclaimers become the first act in over 20 years to chart simultaneously with two different recordings of the same song. The last person to achieve this was Lulu, who in the last week of July 1986 had both her original 1964 recording of "Shout" in the Top 75 alongside a brand new "86" version.
Country duo Haley & Michaels covered this for their 2014 eponymous debut EP. "When I heard it, I listened to it, and I felt like, 'Wait a second, this could take on a whole different meaning if a man and woman were singing it to each other,'" Haley said. "I bounced it off Ryan, and he had actually just heard it, and it was one of those things, it was on both of our minds, and we just started playing it to see what it would sound like."
This was featured in a beloved Budweiser commercial that aired during the 2015 Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. A sequel to the previous year's "Puppy Love" spot where the Budweiser Clydesdales befriend a golden retriever puppy, this one finds the dog getting lost, and the horses saving him from a wolf and guiding him home. The song was used to convey the lengths that living creatures will go for love.
The version used in the commercial is a downtempo take on the song performed by
Sleeping at Last, which is the one-man operation of Ryan O'Neal. He released the song in 2013.
There are plenty of
"la la" songs, but this one is a "da da" song, with the very Scottish refrain:
Da-da, da da (da-da, da da)
Da-da-da dun, da-da-lun, da-da-lun, da-da-la da-daThe original music video from 1988 shows the band performing the song in front of clips of trains and various other means of travel. When the song took off in 1993, a new version was shot in the same style but with footage from Benny & Joon cut in.
"I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" plays at the end of the 2026 movie The Sheep Detectives, a comedy starring Hugh Jackman. It's also used in these movies:
Pitch Perfect (2012)
Identity Thief (2013)
Peter Rabbit (2018)
And in episodes of Family Guy, Slow Horses, Impulse, and Parks And Recreation.
