If you want a soft, energetic and happy song to headline your day, tell Siri – or Alexa, depending – to play OneRepublic’s “Runaway.” Its vibrant up tempo beat and carefree lyrics will do just the trick.
After the success of their 2022 single, “I Ain’t Worried,” and the flurry of a world tour, the band is back with yet another single not unlike many others they have managed to successfully chart. Released on May 26, the song was recorded while the band toured Southeast Asia.
“Runaway” is a song about letting your fears, internal struggles and constraints melt away, while you lose yourself in the thrill of seeing new things and exploring new places – though I doubt they meant it this literally.
“Run away / Right now, let’s just run away / All that talk is killing me / One last shot, hold onto me, oh,” Ryan Tedder sings in the intro, obviously talking about his, and his band’s need, to escape all that is bothering them.
“There’s something I gotta say to ya / There’s somewhere we gotta go / And now we’re sinkin’ in the sand, chasin’ what we can” – from this first verse, I’ll say that my former assumption that their means of escaping these worries is through travel is correct. “Baby, it’s not enough / It’s like we’re stuck in the mezzanine / With twenty floors left to go (Oh yeah) / And now we’re drivin’ in the rain, tryin’ to switch the lane / But you already know.”
The rest of the track describes their impatience to do all the things they want to do, and one of the things they want to do seems to involve chasing the “blue skies.”
The accompanying music video starts off by showing us eight different locations across Southeast Asia where the shooting probably took place. Apart from showing us glimpses into their tour, they also showed us the streets of the cities they visited and their interaction with their culture and landscape.
Days before “Runaway’s” release date, fans got to hear snippets of the song and see clips of its music video when the band teased it across their social media channels.
The song is written by Ryan Tedder, Johnny Simpson, Nolan Sipe, Brent Kutzle, and Benjamin Samama, and produced by John Nathaniel, Kutzle, and Samama. It’s predicted that it will appear on the band’s upcoming sixth album.
Fans praised the song for its happy message, with one writing, “What makes this band so profound for me is the words touch on everything we all feel and go through, but they remain positive and upbeat about those experiences. They remind us simply, ” This, too, shall pass.” Enjoy the journey.”
And oh, I almost forgot, the locations for the video shoot are Manila, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Taipei, and Tokyo. In case, you feel inspired to visit any of them.
