Songfacts®:

• "Twenty-Five Miles" finds Edwin Starr on a long trek to get back home, where he knows his lady will be waiting for him. When we pick up the action, he's already been walking for three days and he still has 25 miles to go. We never find out why he ended up so far away and why he didn't call for a ride, but he's determined to finish this trip on foot. As the song progresses he gets closer to his destination: 15 miles, then 10, five. Finally he goes around the bend and sees his baby - he made it!
  
  Edwin Starr was on Motown Records when he released the song in 1969. A year earlier, the label released another song about going to great lengths to reach a loved one: "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," originally released as a duet between The Supremes and The Temptations, but made into a hit by Diana Ross in 1970.
• This song is a little unusual because the distance Starr travels is literal, not metaphorical. Most songs of this ilk describe walking an unrealistic distance because they're symbolic; we know The Proclaimers aren't really going to walk "500 Miles, and there's no way Vanessa Carlton is going to cover a thousand miles on foot. But 25 miles is certainly possible, and the lyric describes details like sore feet and staying in stride to prove that Edwin Starr really is on a long walk.
• Edwin Starr wrote "Twenty-Five Miles" with the Motown writers Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol; those two also produced the song. Starr ended up on Motown when they purchased his contract from his previous label, Ric-Tic Records (also in Detroit) around 1966. With Ric-Tic, he had a modest hit with "Agent Double-O-Soul" in 1965. His first releases on Motown didn't get much attention, and Starr felt like he was being underutilized, especially when they had him record songs he didn't write. But "Twenty-Five Miles" was a breakthrough, charting at #6 and giving him some cachet at the label. A year later, Motown had him record "War," a song The Temptations released on an album but didn't issue as a single. Starr's version was a huge hit, going to #1 for two weeks.
  
  He never again approached that region of the chart but became a popular touring act in the UK after he moved there in 1983. Star was still performing regularly when he died of a heart attach in 2003 at 61.
• "Twenty-Five Miles" bears a strong resemblance to a 1967 Wilson Pickett song called "Mojo Mama," which starts: "32 miles out of Waycross..."
  
  The similarity is so close, the writers of that song are credited on "Twenty-Five Miles." "Mojo Mama" was recorded at Stax Records in Memphis, which had their own brand of soul to rival Motown.
• In the intro, we can hear a stomping sound to give us a sense of Edwin Starr starting his walk. This was done in the studio by stomping on a board (different stories have surfaced about who did the stomping, but it was likely a team effort). The Motown studios in Detroit where the song was recorded had a great sound for this - check out "Where Did Our Love Go" by The Supremes to hear another example of this technique.
• Bill Doggett, a funky organ player who had an instrumental hit in 1956 with "Honky Tonk," released an instrumental cover of "Twenty-Five Miles" soon after Edwin Starr's song came out. Starr was a singer in Doggett's band early in his career.
• The song shows up in these movies:
  
  Adventures In Babysitting (1987)
  Dead Presidents (1995)
  A Room for Romeo Brass (1999)
  Road Trip (2004)
  Guy X (2005)
  Burn (2012)
  
  It also appears in episodes of The Instigators, The Bear and Sex Education.