(from their album This Is The Story, released in 1987)
Hey, everybody! Sorry about the delays in putting out any new articles or stuff worth reading. It’s been a hectic few months and between ROUGE! doing a handful of shows before going on a brief live hiatus to work on some ideas for a movie, along with getting prepped for our Canada Day and Punk Prom shows I kinda forgot to keep up with the writing portion of the website. Or really just the website in general. Like, did you even know we finally put our first album out?? Yeah. That’s happened in between then and now. But admittedly a lot of it has come down to having a lot of ideas and not knowing where to spend the time tackling them so we’re gonna try something different and see what that does for us. This series is going to cover the opening tracks on albums and discuss not only whether these songs are good or not, but also how they help set the tone for the albums they come from in the form of some short-form articles. Maybe I have a lot to say, maybe I don’t. Okay? Okay.
The song we’re covering is from a band whose most well-known first impression is not this song, but rather a major hit from their breakthrough sophomore album. You may have heard of it.
Before Craig and Charlie Reid would become famous for being the guys who would walk 500 miles and then walk 500 more they were a minimalist two-piece folk punk band that went by the name The Proclaimers and on their debut album the opening track lays out the stakes of their career pretty clearly with an absolute rager of a song called “Throw The ‘R’ Away.”
Do you know what the most distinct part of “(I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles” was though? It wasn’t the chorus, nor the stomping beat, and it’s not the “haverin'” lyric that throws everybody off, it’s the strong Scottish accents the two brothers sing and harmonize in. Even when they were first getting their start on television people were making note of them being proud of “being one of the few Scottish bands who don’t sing with American accents,” which is certainly a way to stand out. And do you know what those two were probably told all the time when they were first getting their start? “Drop the accents if you want to make it big across the world.” And DO YOU KNOW what those two said (in so many words)? “Fuck you, we’re not changing shit,” and thus kicks off the inspiration for probably one of their more underrated tunes.
It not only opens up their debut album This Is The Story, but was also the band’s debut single, which notably didn’t chart anywhere (it would be the follow-up single “Letter From America” off that same album which would help kick the door down for the brothers going forward, charting at #3 in the UK and hitting a silver certification in Britain). So how does their debut album kick off? The strumming of acoustic guitars slowly picking up speed as Charlie strums through his chords and then comes to a stop for a two-count clap to come in. It’s very punk from two people whom one wouldn’t suspect to be punk at all, but really it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that these two dorky brothers were punk enthusiasts at heart, especially given the interviews where Craig cites their interests in bands such as The Clash and The Sex Pistols who famously sang in their native English accents. It also helped these two realized they could start their own band and do what they wanted to do even if they weren’t exactly trying to be The Beatles or anything. The two-count clap comes in and the message of the song gets laid out bare in the first two lines.
“I’ve been so sad/since you said my accent was bad”
-The Proclaimers, “Throw The ‘R’ Away” (1987)
Right there you’re hit with what’s going on. Though on the surface it’s just a song about the joys of a thick Scottish accent it’s also about firmly standing up for simply being themselves, and really that’s a message everyone should be able to appreciate; don’t lose a piece of yourself in an attempt to fit in. Elsewhere Craig confronts the people who are claiming to just say it as a joke when he can tell people are clearly not joking about dropping the accent, referring to those people as “Saxon” in a derogatory manner (it is kinda funny though, sorry), and ultimately mocking the notion that they need to change who they are.
Ultimately the most ballsy part of this song is that it’s done with such minimal arrangement, using just an acoustic guitar, hand claps, bongos, and vocals. This is the sort of song I could imagine some Scottish punk band singing full-throat in some sweaty basement wherever Scotland DIY shows happen, so to hear these two having a go at it by themselves is courageous at times. Charlie’s backing vocals are both pitch-perfect and incredibly urgent in how they’re presented, going off on his own little ideas here and there including some fairly breathy yelps before returning to harmonize with Craig when the hook comes around. Craig’s lead vocals are perfectly controlled chaos that only ever come off the rails at the end and while it’s controlled chaos it’s still hard to not feel every ounce of emotion he brings to the words, especially in the bridge.
I think it’s a song that does a lot in its relatively short run time, and yet it feels like it could easily run for double the length it does. Charlie’s backing vocals never remain stagnant, switching from one trick to another before coming back to perfectly harmonize with Craig’s lead, Craig’s vocals are spot-on in their anger with the unnamed you who said his accent was bad, the lyrics absolutely rip, and though the song sounds like it’s not just two people at times, I wouldn’t mind seeing a version of this with a Scottish punk band backing them or something to get the full effect of the song.
How does this work as a first impression for the album? Well, it’s a perfect first impression actually; it’s the band announcing in so many words that they’re going to do things on their terms they way they want to and not the way everyone else wants them to, and they did exactly that. That refusal to step down and bend to trends of the day would ultimately be part of what would lead these brothers to their most well-known hit, and a gem that gets lodged in my head way too often for my own good.
Thank you for staying true to yourselves, Craig and Charlie. Never change.
This is Harvey VD reminding you to kick out the ROUGE!, motherfuckers!!
Other recommended songs from The Proclaimers:
“Let’s Get Married”
“(I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles”
“[I’m Gonna] Burn Your Playhouse Down”
“Sunshine on Leith”
“What Makes You Cry”
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