Vanessa Carlton — "A Thousand Miles"
The piano riff every kid who took lessons tried to learn. Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" owned 2002 radio, then got a whole second life in White Chicks, with Terry Crews belting every word in absolute earnest. It belongs equally to burned CDs, karaoke nights, and the meme age that followed.
Released February 18, 2002 as the lead single from Vanessa Carlton's debut album Be Not Nobody, "A Thousand Miles" began life under the title "Interlude." Producer Ron Fair insisted it be renamed — he believed "Interlude" lacked marketability — and so it became "A Thousand Miles." Carlton wrote the song alone; Fair produced the track along with Curtis Schweitzer, and its defining element — that piano riff — became instantly recognizable from the first two bars.
The song peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 in May 2002, holding the position for three weeks, and spent 41 weeks on the chart overall — making it the sixth-most-successful single of 2002 in the US and Carlton's only Top 10 hit. It earned three Grammy nominations at the 45th Annual Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year (both awards went to Norah Jones's "Don't Know Why"). The accompanying music video, directed by Marc Klasfeld, featured Carlton playing piano on a moving flatbed truck rolling through city streets — a practical effect, no green screen — and the image of her at that piano became inseparable from the song itself.
The song's cultural life proved unexpectedly durable. It had already appeared in Legally Blonde (2001) before it was even a single. Then in White Chicks (2004) came the moment that sealed its afterlife: Terry Crews performing a beaming, word-for-word singalong, turning the song into one of the 2000s' most durable memes. Every karaoke night since has featured someone attempting that piano riff or that vocal run.
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