“Johnny Run Away” by Tones and I

"Johnny Run Away" is where it all started for Tones and I: her debut single, the lead track from her first EP The Kids Are Coming, and the first song she ever wrote. It's about her best friend Kurt, whom she met in 2012 and later lived with, and the night he told her about coming out to a disapproving father as a boy, a journey that had nearly broken him. She framed it as a song about how people cope with judgment and rejection, at home and out in the world.

Konstantin Kersting produced, recorded and mixed it, and it climbed to number 12 on the ARIA Singles Chart. Kurt later said people had told him it helped them through something similar, and that he wished a song like it had existed ten years earlier. "Dance Monkey" came next.

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