She separates “love’s the only thing I’ve ever known” from “watch your back” and sings it so yearningly that the ugly bit is extraordinarily lost. She alongates the Highway Instea(eaead) until you forget all about the trading. Norah Jones is far too sweet for such cruelty. Here, we have the same line, but the logic is reversed - far from being the rationale for traveling, supporting a family is a side-benefit that Waits would “trade,” that gorgeous mercantile word, in a minute for the lifestyle we’ve all lost, the open highway. The food/roof line is a classical excuse for the traveling businessperson being away from his family - they are so invested in providing for their family they can’t spare any time to actually be with them. One thing’s for sure, sweet baby - I always take the long way home. Necessary how? Because the virtue of the traveling salesman is that he is a man so ill-disposed towards family life that you half-wish him to be away. What is that tragedy? It depends on whether you ask Tom Waits or Norah Jones.Īs with Tuxedomoon and Nouvelle Vague, Norah Jones’ cover of Tom Waits’ song strips it of its necessary ugliness. As problematic as these characters tend to be - we’re about to see one up close and personal - there is a tragedy to this loss, as there is whenever a species becomes extinct.

Since virtually all companies have suspended non-essential travel, and the internet has made the need for a business trip much more questionable than it used to be, this figure may soon be removed from the face of the earth. Made famous by Henry Miller for high-schoolers everywhere, this species builds his identity (for he is culturally a man) on working far from home, the very work and lifestyle there is no possibility of doing or having in the foreseeable future. There is a type of human we call the traveling salesman, or more broadly the traveling businessman, whose very existence is now in question.

Take a long way home lyrics