“Run” by Snow Patrol

"Run" was the second single from Final Straw, Snow Patrol's third album, from 2003, and it came out of a bad night: Gary Lightbody dreamed it up in 2000 after an accident on a bender. He wrote the words, and the music is credited to him with Iain Archer, Nathan Connolly, Mark McClelland and Jonny Quinn.

Garret Lee produced and Chris Lord-Alge mixed, and the record builds like a slow sunrise: a hushed opening, then guitars that swell and strings that lift it skyward, courtesy of James Banbury on cello, Alison Dods and Fiona McCapra on violin and Bruce White on viola. Lightbody sings like he's clinging on for dear life. It's been called a Britpop power ballad, and critics loved it, comparing it to Coldplay's "Yellow".

It went top five in the UK in 2004 and has kept coming back to the chart since, and it cracked the top 40 in Ireland, the Netherlands and on the American Modern Rock Tracks. Paul Gore directed the video, which has the band out at night with distress flares and motorcycles; Mark Pellington shot another that was never released.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.