Longer than these great walls of China?

June 7, 2006 9:42 AM

Can you help me identify this song?

I heard this song about five or six weeks ago whilst getting my haircut. The guy cutting my hair didn't know what it was nor did anybody there. I guess the guy that made the mix CD was off work that day.

It was fairly soft, guitar over electronics (think of some stuff Beth Orton does) a womans voice singing the following line (or at least as I think I heard it, I'm terrible about mis-hearing lyrics):
"Longer than these great walls of China"

That's the only line I could catch and get written down so I wouldn't forget it. My first guess was Beth Orton but I'm just not familiar enough with her body of music to have been able to use that as a lead if that is indeed her.

I've searched many times on google with variants of the words I wrote down and just can't seem to find it.
(variants include "the great wall", "the" and "those" instead of "these".)

So, what is it? (please)

posted by horseblind to media & arts (7 comments total)

This is a long shot, but could it be a cover of Paul Simon's "Something So Right?" That has a line "They got a wall in China, that's a thousand miles long...."

iTunes has covers by Annie Lennox, Phoebe Snow, and Susan Werner (the last of which sounds closest - but not all that close - to Beth Orton).
posted by AgentRocket at 10:01 AM on June 7, 2006

Honestly, the first thing that came to mind was the theme from 'Roseanne':

If what doesn't kill us is makin' us stronger
We're gonna last longer
Than the Great Wall of China
Or that rabbit with a drum...
posted by cdadog at 10:17 AM on June 7, 2006

Brazilian Girls? Amazon Lyrics
posted by GeekAnimator at 10:26 AM on June 7, 2006

Googled your phrase + lyrics and got some "misheard" lyrics results for the theme from Roseanne, which supports cdadog. That the site mentions it was performed by Blues Traveler confounded the idea that this was the artist/rendition you heard. I couldn't reach a list of bands who've covered it. Further searching might.
posted by safetyfork at 10:26 AM on June 7, 2006

I should add to my answer above that, specifically, the song is called "Long" and it was found by googling: "walls of china" +lyrics
posted by GeekAnimator at 10:32 AM on June 7, 2006

Woohoo! We have a winner! Thanks Geekanimator. I think I remember seeing that in results but for some reason never looked into it. I think I was fixated on the word "these".

Can anyone give a review? I just listened to an NPR story about them and like what was sampled. Thanks again.
posted by horseblind at 10:43 AM on June 7, 2006

Best lines from the Brazilian Girls' song:

Longer than your hair in the 80's
Longer than the Long Run
posted by Chrischris at 10:46 AM on June 7, 2006