“Runaways” by The Killers

"Runaways" was the Killers' way of announcing Battle Born, their fourth studio album: in July 2012 it got its first spins on KROQ, Radio 104.5 and BBC Radio 1 on the same day, then went on sale a week later. It's the band at maximum widescreen, Brandon Flowers writing the words and the group building the music around him into something enormous, all revving engines and big-sky chords.

Brendan O'Brien produced it, with extra production from Steve Lillywhite and Damian Taylor and Alan Moulder at the mixing desk. Rolling Stone's Jon Dolan heard a rock fever dream in it, pumped full of Springsteen mythology and Toto-Journey hooks, which is about the size of it.

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