The One Thing I Learned From "Runaway"

I’m not saying that I invented the whole listening to “Runaway”thing, but sometimes I feel like I did.

The song probably didn’t grab me until it had been, like, out for a while — a few days. But after I don’t know five or ten listens, it was embedded, you know, into me. Now, this was after “Power” and well into the G.O.O.D. Friday releases. For some reason, I didn’t really listen to the G.O.O.D. Friday stuff before the album came out. Like I said before, I wasn’t really following Kanye that much at the time. I thought “Power” was cool, but I wasn’t really aware of the possibilities of Kanye West. Which is to say, I heard “Runaway” with fresh ears and no intentions.

Kanye is a virtuoso at programmings drums, with merely a ‘good’ ear for melody. When he does write a tune that sticks, though, it really sticks. “Runaway” is straight-up earwormy. Kanye’s singing, which on 808 and Heartbreak is honestly not very good any way you slice it, fashions on “Runaway” an immediate and visceral hook. As it rolled out, there were so many different versions that it’s hard to keep straight. At the Video Music Awards, there was a briefer MPC/piano email, but that Auto-Tune vocal coda. A few days later, an edited studio version rolled out with a shortened intro and no coda. The album version has a long, sparse introduction and the Auto-Tune coda. I treat the album version as canonical.

The way I look at it, there are a lot of things going for and against “Runaway”. I’m not sure how you like that stately and understated introduction. For me, knowing what’s about to happen, it’s one of the most dramatic moments in pop music. When the drums manage roll in, then the chorus, then the verse, then the chorus, then… “Runaway” is basically a classic rock song with one rap verse. I feel like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy could have been subtitled “Rockist Tropes”. Does that contribute to the general notion that it’s a Big Artistic Achievement? Yes. Is that why it got a 10.0 from Pitchfork? I’m sure that’s part of it. I just don’t care, though.

At one point (a very quickly reached point, I might add!) writing about My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy turned into writing about writing about it; i.e., it became more interesting or critically profitable to write about why it was such a watershed cultural achievement than writing about the music. Don’t get me wrong: critics tackled the album head-on, but a lot of the casual critical conversation seemed to me to be of the ’Ughh what’ the big deal? We get it’ variety. Today, I’ve tried to write about the album itself and how it makes me feel, and “Runaway” certainly makes me feel things.

It’s sort of similar to how I didn’t invent listening to and really liking “Runaway”: I’m pretty sure “Runaway” didn’t invent the whole guys being assholes thing. Guys have always been assholes, douchebags, etc. And not just guys. Everyone of every type of gender or undecidedness-about-gender — everyone — is douchebag, asshole, scumbag, jerkoff, and so on. And I think people have always been sort of self-aware about their innate shittiness. I really don’t think there are many sociopaths out there among us; it’s just outwardly, people adjust their expectations and behavior and just, like, cope — you know? Your heart hardens, or you just get used to expecting very little from yourself. You just know you’re going to fuck up again, and you steel yourself for the fallout before you’ve even fallen. That’s just life, dude.

There was a lot of talk about Kanye’s self-awareness about — maybe even sadomasochistic pleasure from reveling in — his terribleness. Like, “Runaway” is certainly not an apology. You notice at the end of the song, Kanye does not hand you the microphone and let you air two and a half minutes of grievances with him. No, he does so himself, inarticulately, purely emotionally. The song is sheer self-indulgence, plain and simple. How, then, does it rise above anything and everything he’s done previously? Good question. I’m not sure how. After talking with many people and getting many people’s comments, it’s clear that everyone resonates differently with Kanye’s music. The striking thing about “Runaway” to me is that, I think, before I listened to it literally hundreds of times I don’t think I really realized how much of a douchebag asshole scumbag jerkoff I was. It is a strange thing, maybe, to run up against in a song you enjoy quite a bit. Every time I listen to the song, when I’m paying attention, I always feel terrible because I am — like everyone else (or so I tell myself) — a terrible person.

When “Runaway”, and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy more generally, were getting heavy initial play in my life, I think it was pretty out of control. They say it’s easy to lose yourself, but I don’t think it is. You don’t lose things that you’re not looking for. If you don’t realize that you’ve really strayed then you’re not lost — you’re changing. Listening to “Runaway” is like seeing a beacon, a marker of where you’re supposed to be. I’m not saying it’s some morality tale. But music is redemptive in various ways. There’s the grand catharsis and dread of a Mozart’s Requiem, and the smaller, close-fitting overcoming of listening to William Byrd Cantiones in a small church. You see yourself in everything, literally. You just cannot get outside of yourself; everything in your field of vision just is in your field of vision, and everything you hear is something you hear. It is trivially and obviously true. And yet, taking in so much everything, I think the thing that does get easily lost is that we’re always seeing ourselves.

So in 2010 and 2011, I felt very out of control of my life, everything. No rails, no guidance. You don’t realize the world is your guidance when it’s not the world you’re happy with. Acknowledging that you are your world when you’re unhappy is just another, more profound failure. But again, realizing you have a problem is the first step, etc., blah blah blah. What was my problem. I think my problem is that it’s difficult to think of yourself as anything other than blameless. Now, that seems to contradict what I said above, but I don’t think it does. When you run up against the whole ‘everyone’s an asshole inside’ worldview, it has a way of totalizing the condition, and in that way render it moot. As I said, you harden your heart, reconcile your actions to a set of lower expectations, and continue on in a worse and meaner life. But in the particular, it still is hard to consider yourself a terrible person. I think “Runaway”’s particular combination of ebullience and misery is a canny decision. You may say that Kanye’s merely obviating blame (and selfishly) by admitting grave fault and then simply telling his interlocutor to “run away”. It is almost the emotional equivalent of grabbing someone by the arm and doing that ‘why are you hitting yourself’ thing. But beside being a superlative drum programmer, Kanye’s also good at painting with emotion — he basically just is, in overused terms, a big ball of emotions. So when hetells Pusha-T to put “more douchebag” into his verse, you can tell he’s making an aesthetic decision. “Runaway” presents a problem, a solution, and an outcome. The problem is you, yourself. The solution is for everyone to leave you alone. And the outcome is being profoundly alone. The way to make it all go down is to over the top on the production and make it sound beautiful and memorable. But it’s still an emotionally windswept song.

Taking “Runaway” as an aesthetic-ethical experience is perhaps a pretentious and in-hindsight sort of thing to do, but I felt a forceful affinity for the song from the start. And this is my conclusion. I don’t know if I’ve improved my life at all, but the idea that things are wrong, very wrong, and that the solutions are always painful is on my constant horizon. People find different things edifying for different reasons, and this is my thing and my reason. It’s the sort of deep feeling that you’re able to cognize instantly, which makes you feel like you’re some innovator in human emotion. A lightweight lesson that sticks in you like a sliver. I don’t know. It’s the sort of experience that seems to be especially well-given by pop music, and probably the reason why I bother with it.

One Week // One Band January 20, 2011