Take the Long Way Home

Take the Long Way Home is a hit single off of Supertramp's 1979 album Breakfast in America. It reached number 10 on the U.S. charts. The song is very catchy and upbeat, but at the same time has an undercurrent of melancholy.

[edit] Quotes

'Take The Long Way Home' has a quality about it that just makes me feel warm inside. I don't know if it's the harmonies or the melodies, or whatever, but I never get sick of it. I always saw the song a little ambiguous. It's on two levels. I see 'home' as being internal and external. It's kind of a play on words. Definitely part of the song is about the shallowness of success and getting caught up in a world and success and chasing, being popular, or whatever, is taking 'the long way home'. Because I think 'home' in its deepest sense is inside, is being at peace with oneself. Again it's ambiguous - 'if you're not around' means… you're dead or you couldn't settle down - you couldn't take it and you're off looking for things that are more important. It's a fun song! I remember having a lot of fun writing it but never really having a clear picture of it. It was more… often when I write songs, I go by gut instinct. A line comes to me and they usually do come to me… the best lines come to me rather than me trying to think them up consciously and I just feel they're right and I go with them whether I totally understand the meaning or not.

—Roger Hodgson, in the studio with Redbeard for The Making of Breakfast in America (first aired in June 1990)

[edit] Trivia

"Take The Long Way Home" was chosen as the #5 favourite song in MOJO Magazine’s readers’ poll in 2006.
"Take The Long Way Home" is used in a trailer for the FX original series, The Riches.
Rock band The Verve Pipe covered the song during the encore of their holiday hometown show in Grand Rapids, MI in December 2005.
Take The Long Way Home is used in BBC series Ashes To Ashes as the climatic song in the series finale.
"Take The Long Way Home" is played at the end of the Freaks and Geeks episode "Looks and Books".
After appearing in the final episode of the British tv series Ashes to Ashes, the song hit the iTunes charts reaching a place at 100.