Another song that got into my head at some point this past weekend, and one that’s far harder to explain away; I hadn’t really thought about this song for years, and when I did find myself remembering it, I softened the hilariously thick Scottish accents of Craig and Charlie Reid (That’d be the Proclaimers, known in America for “500 Miles” and little else, it seems) more than a little bit. But listening to it again, I kind of love it: There’s a very old-fashioned quality to it, especially when you get past the “I’m on my way/From misery to happiness today/Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh” part and into… what, the bridge? The verse? I’m not sure how you’d define the construction of this song, really. But there’s an old rockabilly sense to this one that I love. It sounds completely at odds with everything that was happening in pop culture in 1988 when it was released, with the exception of Billy Bragg’s stuff at the time… which, now that I think about it, may be why I have such fond memories of it, really. Here’s to bands who wish it was thirty years earlier and somehow convince other people to wish the same.
Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan