“I don’t generally buy Mike Oldfield as a pop contender. That’s just something he had to do for a while in the 1980s to shift a few units so he could keep cranking out the big deal epics. But Five Miles Out (found on the album of the same name) definitely rates, if nothing else, as one of the weirder singles to ever at least flirt with the charts. Ethereal vocals c/o Maggie Reilly, vocoder and metal licks c/o Mr. Oldfield, and a story being told of a small airplane caught out in hurricane weather. Or if you’re thinking metaphorically, it’s about any of us at a crisis point. Sometimes, you’ve just got to fix a course, and hold true, either get to the other side of the storm in question or get annihilated trying. At least that’s how my friend Charles put it to me, late 80s sometime, having emerged from a very dark point in his young adult life. He made it.” (Philip Random)