Number 450 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time is a geographical hot mess.
Jimmy Webb starts "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" with these words:
By the time I get to Phoenix, she'll be rising
Assuming he's starting from Los Angeles and that she's getting up around 6:30 to get ready for her morning commute, that means he needs to start heading east on Interstate 10 at 1:00 AM.
The second verse starts:
To make that bit of narrative possible, he'll head roughly northeast on a series of state highways until he hits I-40...and she'll be taking her lunch break at 1:00.
Third verse. Different than the first. And our little map adventure gets a little bit worse:
By the time I make Oklahoma, she'll be sleeping
This is where I start disbelieving the whole scenario.
From Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the Oklahoma state line is a drive of five hours and 45 minutes. It is now 6:45 PM in Los Angeles, she obviously has taken at least one dose of a sleeping pill, and he has driven for almost 18 hours.
Methinks he's a little obsessed with the whole romantic notion of traveling across the country just to prove her wrong when she thinks that he won't really go.
Wouldn't leaving his apartment key on top of a tersely-written note suffice? Sheesh.
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