Back in Dallas, our house was 6.2 miles away from my wife’s office. In typical big city traffic, that basically meant her daily commute required a 45-minute drive EACH WAY. It was sucko — but can you imagine how bad it would have been if we’d lived a thousand miles away from her office?

A MILLION?

Those figures sound nuts, I know, but a lot of rock stars have had distance problems in that context — and that’s even taking into consideration the tendency of The Famous to exaggerate.

(Sting, for example, famously vowed to call a girlfriend up a thousand times a day to request her hand in marriage. Now, no less than Ptolemy, in his Almagest, was doubtful of Sting’s ability to pull that many requests off in a 24 hour period — pointing out that His Stingness would have to call the woman in question about 42 times an hour! Personally, as long as he was talking about himself, I think Sting could pull it off.)

Anyway, back to mileage. In the Vaughan Brothers’ “Long Way From Home,” Stevie Ray sings, “I am a million miles from nowhere / and that’s a long, long way from home.” That’s a HELL of a long way, Stevie! The question is: where exactly are you to begin with that you ended up so far away from nowhere?

Vaughan must live in the same neighborhood as Rory Gallagher — and it seems they have waterfront property: Gallagher’s wonderfully melancholic “A Million Miles Away” obviously indicates that he’s exactly the same distance away as Vaughan, but he also throws in the valuable clue that he’s “sailing like the driftwood / on a windy bay.” Waterfront, baby.

On the same street, the Plimsouls reside. They, too, are a million miles away. Their royalty rates must not be great, though, because they can’t afford to get home — or maybe there’s just not enough incentive to go a million miles to get there: “I’m a million miles away / And there’s nothing left to bring me back today.”

The Offspring, too, have a “million miles away” song. Rihanna, too.

My suggestion to all of these folks might be to contact the Proclaimers’ real estate agent. It seems from the context of the aforementioned songs, being a million miles away isn’t particularly convenient or fun. Meanwhile, the Proclaimers, as evidenced by their song “(I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles,” assert that they would walk one thousand miles to “fall down” at a desirable babe’s door.*

I suppose my only hope is that, once the Proclaimers get there and fall down at Her door, it turns out she’s not the same woman Sting’s calling 42 times a minute. She’ll be so busy answering the phone that she’ll never hear the doorbell.

OK: what mileage songs am I missing out on? And which is the best? My money’s on Rory — but the Vaughans and the Plimsouls are both magnficent, too.

* Note: Speaking of a thousand miles, Vanessa Carlton, the Heartbeats and Hoodoo Gurus all have songs called "A Thousand Miles Away," so there's that to consider, too.