Songoftheday 4/24/23 - Making my way downtown, walking fast faces pass and I'm homebound...

 

 

"A Thousand Miles" - Vanessa Carlton

from the album Be Not Nobody (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 36

 

Today's song comes from singer/songwriter Vanessa Carlton, who grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania, where she studied music under her mother as well as at ballet school before moving to New York City. Carlton was signed to A&M Records, where after an aborted attempt at a debut Rinse released her first album Be Not Nobody, preceded by the single "A Thousand Miles". Written by the singer, and produced by Ron Fair and Curtis Schweitzer, the song started with its iconic piano roll hook that defined the song. With a conversational cadence that harkens back to the singer-songwriter rebirth of the early nineties with Marc Cohn and Lisa Loeb, the lyrics have Vanessa reminisce about a crush from her college years, and how obsessed she was. The piano and string section in the production put this song on such a higher plane than the usual pop fare. Originally titled "Interlude" for the shelved album, it was tactfully changed to "A Thousand Miles", and as MTV came on board with the cute low-key music video that let the song shine but still kept your interest, radio followed shortly, and Vanessa found herself with her first and biggest hit...

"A Thousand Miles" hit the top ten on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in May of 2002. On the radio, the song spent five weeks at #1 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, as well as topping the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") list for seven weeks, and taking two weeks at #2 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. Internationally, the single topped the Australian chart for two weeks, and reached the top ten in Poland (#2), Denmark (#3), Ireland (#3), Belgium (#4 Flanders/#8 Wallonia), New Zealand (#4), Hungary (#5), the United Kingdom (#6), Italy (#6), France (#8), Switzerland (#8), and Romania (#8). It also made the top-40 in the Netherlands (#12), Austria (#12), Germany (#14), Norway (#14), and Sweden (#30). The Be Not Nobody album, released in April of that year, peaked at #5 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2003, "A Thousand Miles" scored three nominations, losing Song of the Year and Record of the Year to Norah Jones' "Don't Know Why", while James Taylor's "Mean Old Man" got the Best Instrumental Arrangement with Vocals.

Both Vanessa and the album will be back to the series.

(9/10)

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Here's Vanessa performing the song on Conan O'Brien....

and in concert in New York City...

Up tomorrow: Another young singer/songwriter aims to please.