Is the world too hard to handle? Do we need to face the suffering? What happens when we turn off empathy?
Phil Collins’ “Long Long Way to Go” is a punch to the gut, a reminder of the world I came of age in and how it shaped us. Whenever I hear that haunting chorus, I’m 16 again, watching the evening news with a knot in my stomach, feeling helpless to do anything about the weight of the world.
I feel that weight again. Unfortunately, Phil Collins’ song still resonates today, 4 decades later.
The Story Behind the Song
“Long Long Way to Go” was written and performed by Phil Collins for his 1985 album No Jacket Required. By then, Collins was already a household name. Amidst the album’s upbeat ’80s pop hits like “Sussudio,” this song stood out as a somber hidden gem with a message.
Phil Collins consciously set out to include a political and socially aware piece on the record. “Long Long Way to Go” became his most overtly political song up to that point. It’s often cited as one of his most popular tracks that was never released as a single.
Why did he write this song and what was he trying to say?
In the mid-’80s, the world was turbulent. We had conflicts and crises filling the news. Famine in Africa, ongoing violence in Northern Ireland, the Cold War, AIDS crisis, and on and on.
Phil Collins has never been known as a protest singer but he tapped into a growing sense of frustration and compassion.
Another wondrous aspect of the song’s creation is the presence of another ’80s icon: Sting. Many fans immediately recognize Sting’s distinctive voice harmonizing in the background. Collins and Sting had met while recording the Band Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Phil Collins felt that Sting, who shared a similar social conscience, would relate to the song’s theme. So he invited Sting to contribute backing vocals. This collaboration added an extra layer of meaning and star power to the track.
I remember watching Live Aid on TV as Phil Collins brought out Sting to join him; even then, I knew something special was happening. Two megastars teaming up for a poignant ballad in front of a global audience of millions.
Despite all this, “Long Long Way to Go” wasn’t a commercial single, so you wouldn’t have heard it on Top 40 radio. It hid toward the end of No Jacket Required, waiting for those who let the record play through (or those who heard it on an episode of Miami Vice). For those of us who discovered it, though, the song became a quiet favorite. It’s the kind of track you’d play on a rainy Sunday when you were feeling all the feelings.
In an album loaded with pop hits, this was the soul and the conscience of the record.
Lyrics with a Lasting Message
Unlike Phil Collins’ more upbeat tunes of the era, “Long Long Way to Go” carries a somber, reflective tone from the first notes. The music itself is gentle and atmospheric. Phil’s voice takes center stage, subdued yet emotive. There’s an intimacy to his vocals, almost as if he’s confiding in us. In fact, one retrospective review noted that this polished track “still manages to convey an almost vulnerable aspect to Collins’ voice”. That vulnerability is key to why the song hits home emotionally. You can sense the genuine concern and weariness in his delivery.
The lyrics read like a fatigued observation of a world gone wrong, delivered by someone who is tired of empty talk. In the opening verse, Phil Collins paints a stark image: “While I sit here trying to think of things to say, someone lies bleeding in a field somewhere.” It’s a jarring contrast! The comfort of our living rooms versus the reality of suffering. By the chorus, he drives the point home that despite all our supposed progress, “we still got a long, long way to go.” The speaker is frustrated with the way things are in the world. We talk about peace and justice, but meaningful change remains out of reach.
What really struck me both then and now is how the song calls out our collective apathy. Phil Collins practically begs us to consider our response to these tragedies. He notes how easy it is to become desensitized. One of the most powerful lines is: “Turn it off if you want to; switch it off or look away.” In other words, at any moment we can change the channel and ignore what’s happening. And that’s exactly the problem.
As the Return to the 80s blog said, the song criticizes how we who hear about tragic events can choose not to care; ignoring the problem is as simple as flipping a switch. That was a potent message in 1985, when nightly news broadcasts brought distant wars and human suffering into our homes, and even more potent now in the age of memes and doomscrolling.
Listening to “Long Long Way to Go” today, I’m crushed by how little the world’s fundamentally changed. The specifics of the conflicts and suffering may differ, but turn on the news on any given day and you’ll find suffering that we can choose to either acknowledge or tune out.
Fuck! Here we are now, 40 years later and the song still rings true. Whether it’s humanitarian crises, social injustice, racism, sexism, LGBTQIA+ hate, ableism, or any form of violence, we still have a long, long way to go. I wish the song’s message had become outdated, but it is more meaningful now than ever before.
Emotionally, the song has always felt to me like a quiet plea that is weary. Phil Collins doesn’t offer solutions or rousing anthemic calls to action here. He holds up an uncomfortable mirror. The mood is one of somber reflection, asking us to just not look away. For a generation of us who grew up under the shadow of the Cold War and so much suffering and inequality those lyrics struck a chord deep in our hearts. They taught us empathy, or at least stirred it within us.
The Sin is Apathy Not Empathy
There’s a reason I’m writing about “Long Long Way to Go” and why you’re reading this. Some songs fade with their era, but some carry forward, gaining meaning as time goes on. The continued resonance of this Phil Collins classic comes down to two things: its message and its emotional honesty.
First, the message. The song speaks to issues of violence, injustice, and the ease of apathy. Sadly, those issues have not resolved themselves in the decades since 1985. If anything, the information age has amplified the contrast Collins was highlighting: we’re more aware than ever of the world’s suffering, yet that very flood of information can numb us. We scroll past one heartbreaking story to the next silly meme, mentally “switching off” the horror because it’s overwhelming.
The lyric “turn it off or look away” is eerily apt for the way we often deal with bad news today. We still have a long, long way to go. Global peace, societal compassion, equality, safety, or even our personal willingness to face uncomfortable truths. That core truth gives the song an urgency. Each new generation that stumbles on it can apply its words to their own context. Unfortunately, they’ll likely find they ring true.
Second, the emotional honesty. When you strip away any bias and just listen to this song, it’s undeniably authentic. He’s not posturing or trying to score a hit here. You can feel that he cares about the subject matter, and about making the listener feel something. The gentle arrangement, the earnest vocals, and Sting’s ethereal harmonies all create a mood where you as a listener drop your guard. I’ve had friends tell me this song made them tear up thinking about world events or even personal struggles. It connects and makes you feel empathy, which is not a fucking sin. Not every song can do that.
Let’s be honest, as long as human empathy hasn’t caught up with human suffering, the song’s emotional core remains relevant.
On a very personal note, “Long Long Way to Go” has continued to resonate with me as I’ve grown older because it has almost become a soundtrack for reflection. It’s not a song I hear often in public, but when I play it now (usually deliberately, when I need to hear it), it takes me through a journey.
I start in that place of ’80s nostalgia, remembering a teen version of me who felt overwhelmed by the world’s problems, and then it brings me to the present, thinking about what I can do to not “switch off” those problems. It reminds me of the ideals we had, the disappointments we witnessed, and the hope we shouldn’t lose. And I know I’m not alone in feeling this. It’s like a quiet anthem for keeping your conscience intact.
In the end, Phil Collins’ “Long Long Way to Go” might not be the first song you think of when someone mentions the 1980s. It never blared from boomboxes on the beach or topped Billboard charts. But its cultural significance and emotional resonance run deep.
Don’t look away. Because we’ve come so far, and still have a long, long way to go.
How Hearts of Glass Doesn’t Look Away
When I wrote Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World, I wasn’t just telling a story about three misfit teens in 1980s suburbia. I was, in a way, writing a response to that very message in “Long Long Way to Go.” The idea that we still have so far to go, and the danger in looking away, is baked into the bones of the novel. Each of the characters is faced with moments where they can turn off the discomfort, pretend not to see, and keep their heads down. But they don’t.
Cassie, with her Debbie Harry swagger and DIY spirit, refuses to pretend the world is fair.
Jenny, profoundly deaf and determined, sees through the empty promises of a world that sidelines girls like her. But she doesn’t stay sidelined. She pushes forward.
And then there’s Ford, our reluctant, broken hearted ex-child model. He’s perhaps the most tempted to look away. To disappear. But love, friendship, and Cassie’s unrelenting truth-telling drag him back. Over time, he begins to see, really see, not just what’s happening to others, but what’s happened to him. And once he does, he can’t go back to the silence.
They each carry wounds. They each have reasons to shut it all out. But they don’t. They look. They care. They stay when it would be easier to walk away. And in doing that, they echo exactly what Collins and Sting sang about all those years ago. That the world won’t change until we stop flipping the channel on other people’s pain.
It’s not just rooted in Gen X realness and 1980s nostalgia, but it’s about what happens when we keep our eyes open. It’s about choosing empathy, even when it hurts. And yeah, we’ve still got a long, long way to go. But stories like this like Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World and songs like “Long Long Way to Go” help light the road ahead.
We just have to be willing to look.
Stay Totally Awesome!
Stay True to You!
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