2000 Great Songs #1436: Run

New Order will always be one of my definitive college bands. Don't get me wrong, I still listen to the band all the time. But they were one of the bands that made the biggest impact on me when I discovered them in college, and my favorite work of theirs will always be the music I heard back in the mid-80s. So I have mixed feelings about 1989's Technique, the first New Order album released after graduation. It's got some great songs, no question; but I've never had the same attachment to it as an overall album. It could be the presence of more keyboard-dominated dance-oriented music (while I'd always preferred their more guitar-oriented tracks); but it's no doubt in part because by the time I was in law school, I was in a different place and just not connecting with their new music the same way. (Though I prefer Technique to anything that followed; I like a few post-Technique songs, but it's really the last long-player I still spin on occasion.)

All that said... I do adore "Run." It's much more of a jangly pop song, or even a ballad, than a dance number. Some gentle strumming, with Bernard in full-on crooning mode, and there are some excellent flourishes: that quick drumbeat intro is wildly distinctive, shades of "Blue Monday" condensed into just a few seconds; the sly addition of the distorted guitars partway through the track; the way it slows to half-speed and most the instruments drop out midway through the song, and then everything picks back up for the extended musical coda. Plus there's just a warm familiarity to the melody (maybe it's the guitar line's subtle connection to John Denver's "Leaving On A Jet Plane," which led to legal action from his publisher--sorry, seems pretty lame to me--and a later co-writing credit for Denver). 

For the single, retitled "Run 2," they did a slight remix and replaced some of that long instrumental run-out with a repeat of the chorus.) Here's the single version:

Original album version (confusingly retitled "Run 2"):

Live 1989:

Hey, why not, here's John Denver & Mama Cass Elliott:

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