Non Christmas-Christmas Music Volume 1: 2000 Miles

This is the first of a two part series. I know that there are other songs that are miscast. However, now that this is the holiday season, I thought that I would focus on two "Christmas songs" that really aren't Christmas songs.

A little more than a year after the VBC launched, I added the song "2000 Miles" by the Pretenders into the regular rotation. Not too long after it stated to play, someone (their identity will remain safe) pulled me aside.

"Why are you playing this song?"

"It's a great song. Why wouldn't I play it?"

"It's February," the person said slowly.

"And?"

"It's a Christmas song."

All I could do is take a deep breath, and shake my head.

To say that "2000 Miles" is a Christmas song is to say that The Godfather is a holiday film. It has to be. There is one scene when Al Martino's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" plays. It's right before Luca Brasi started sleeping with the fishes.

"2000 Miles" is actually about a long distance relationship. At the beginning of the song, Chrissie Hynde's opening line "He's gone," is utterly heartbreaking. Her lover has just left, and that moment has just become the longest possible amount of time before she will be reunited with him. The next time that they will be together will be on Christmas.

That's the only thing that the song has to do with Christmas.



The song has a bit of significance to me. When D and I first got together, we were a long distance relationship. I lived in Minneapolis, and she resided in Costa Mesa, California. We were literally 2000 miles away (according to Google Maps it's only 1,935 miles, but still). "2000 Miles" was the opening track to the second mix CD I made for her, which by the way was not a Christmas CD. Plus, I live in Minnesota. The line "The snow is falling down, it gets colder day by day" can be ANY day…not just "Christmas time". The song pretty much summed up the first few chapters of our relationship, until she moved out here (which when we're at this time of the year, we both wonder why I didn't move to California, Uber Allas).

The song was also miscast in 2007 in an episode of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. I loved that show (and apparently, only one of 12 people in the country that did), and Aaron Sorkin usually does a great job of using music in his stories, but he really missed the mark for this one. At the conclusion of "The Harriet Dinner Part 2", Danny and Jordan finally get off the roof of Studio 60(and get it on), Matt gets rejected by one of the Bombshell Babies about an hour after he found out that Harriet was considering sleeping with his old rival, and the stage of the Addison Theater gets ripped up because a viper, coyote, and a ferret are trapped underneath. None of these plot points have anything to do with a long distance relationship…or Christmas. To be fair, I know that Sorkin is a fan of the Pretenders, He used "Hymn to Her" in an episode of Sports Night (again, its uses is a stretch for the plot).

The song has been covered a couple of times. KT Tunstall released it couple of years ago for a holiday EP, and Sheryl Crow and Coldplay have taken a crack at it.

Don't get me wrong. I certainly can feel the spirit of the season while listening to "2000 Miles" and sipping on some egg nog or wassail…or whatever's handy. I'd just like to hear a radio station play it during the other 11 months of the year.