Music
You Need to Hear this Song #22
Heavy Rotation — Runaways, the Killers (Battle Born, 2012)
Heavy Rotation was a music industry term for songs that one way or another got a lot of airplay. It referred to the large amount of rotation that a particular record got on turntables at radio stations. Since, until the 1980s, this was the only way to get new music into the ears and brains of listeners, heavy rotation meant increased sales. These were good for record companies and artists alike.
Today, some of us still put records on at home and give them a spin. Most of us don’t. However, the term still applies, though in a different way. Streaming services like Spotify sell subscriptions to listeners and then pay artists based on listens. At least, that’s the way we think it works.
For me, heavy rotation means a song that is in my head for some reason. Maybe for a moment, maybe for a day, maybe for longer. It’s a song that you come back to from time to time and still feels just as good.
This series of articles is dedicated to these songs.
Here, I aim to highlight a particular song by a particular band or singer. We should know a bit about the band, a bit about where the song fits into its history and where the song fits into what was happening in music at that time. Then there’s the song itself. Who’s playing on it, what are the lyrics getting at and why is it so good? How does it still occupy sonic space in our lives?
I’ll (try to) keep it short. It shouldn’t take you any longer to read than the song itself. To that end, I’ll put a Youtube clip of the original recording at the top of the article so you can listen as you read. Or not. And because a song is often much different live than in the recording studio, I’ll stick a live clip on at the end.
What song is in your head right now? Here’s one that won’t leave mine today:
#22 — Runaways, the Killers (Battle Born, 2012)
This album is already ten years old and I was a huge Killers fan when it came out and saw them a number of times on the following tour and at music festivals. But I have to be honest and say that I’ve kind of lost interest since then.
“Battle Born” was their fourth album and three more have followed since, with another one apparently on the way soon. I don’t even think it’s their best work, that honour going to their second album, “Sam’s Town” from 2006. They are still doing good work today and seem to be playing live and touring continuously. However, it’s been a while since they’ve put together a start to finish classic.
And don’t get me started on “Are We Human?” What was that anyway? They nearly jumped the shark here but were able to move past a fleeting disco infatuation and reset themselves on “Battle Born”
That aside, this album does have a few classics that will raise the roof off of any hockey arena for years to come, in between live staples such as “Mr Brightside” and “Somebody Told Me”, “The Way it Was” and “Miss Atomic Bomb” chief among them.
However, the standout song on this album is the first single and the second track, Runaways. It has everything you want from a future classic rock anthem, especially if you are a Bruce Springsteen fan. The Boss and the E Street Band are unmistakably channelled and paid tribute to in this song.
It begins with classic nostalgia for a relationship that once was one thing and now has become something else. You know right off the bat that something has changed, something is missing
“Blonde hair blowin’ in the summer wind
A blue-eyed girl playing in the sand
I’d been on a trail for a little while
But that was the night that she broke down and held my hand”
Acoustic guitar and piano and the fresh faced, wide eyed vocals of Brandon Flowers, which turns into a cinematic bellow at :57 as Ronnie Vainucci’s drums and Dave Stoermer’s guitar join the (so far) joyful noise.
“We can’t wait til tomorrow
You gotta know that this is real, baby
Why you wanna fight it,
It’s the one thing you can’t choose, oh!”
But it’s a flawed character that Flowers is describing here. He gave the relationship a try but if he’s honest with himself, he’s just not cut out for it. He leads himself into temptation when he loses focus and gets distracted.
“I swore on the head of our unborn child that I could take care of the three of us
But I got the tendency to slip when the nights get wild.
It’s in my blood”
To me, the chorus at 1:45 is our first glimpse at peak Springsteen idolization. The drum fill is lifted straight from Badlands era Max Weinberg and the you can hear the Boss’s agonized, tortured soul wail coming through. Flowers’ voice is much shinier and a lot less throaty and gruff than Springsteen’s and so it gets the job done in a different way.
The man in the song made big promises and the woman wants to believe in them, but is realistic of what he’s actually capable of. He knows that he can’t be hemmed in by the responsibilities of family, marriage, children, the home and so he runs away, hence the title. He tries to come home, but has essentially defeated himself. Where have we heard this before?
“At night I come home after they go to sleep
Like a stumbling ghost, I haunt these halls
There’s a picture of us on our wedding day
I recognize the girl but I can’t settle in these walls”
The Roy Bittan-esque descending scale on the piano is unmistakable at 2:33 and the guitar power chords that emanated out of that, well we’ve heard those somewhere before. But wait, there’s more. The irresistible high point of the song comes at 3:11, with a reference to a car and the reality of being Born to Runaway.
“I turn the engine over and my body just comes alive
Ain’t we all just Runaways”
That moment is pure Springsteen. The yeah-ah’s that lead the song out from 3:40 only serve to underline this fact. Paul Combs, your thoughts?
Here they are on Letterman in 2012, which is where I first heard it. Tell me you don’t get a shiver at 3:36 when Flowers really hits his mark.
If you have made it this far, it will occur to you if this is #22 in this series, then there must be 21 previous ones. This is a correct assumption and here I will link #21. At the bottom of it, you find a link to #20 and the bottom of it, you can — if you so choose — be taken to #19. This ingenious system that I thought up all by myself continues all the way to #1.
I really do hope that you like what you have just read. If you want unlimited access to thousands of writers, consider a subscription to Medium. It will set you back $5 a month and if you use this link, then I get a slice of that and will continue to follow this band around the world.