"Runnin' " is a song by British record producer Naughty Boy, featuring American singer Beyoncé and British singer Arrow Benjamin. It was released online on 18 September 2015 as the first single from Naughty Boy's upcoming second studio album, Bungee Jumping. Upon its release, the song received positive reviews from music critics, mostly praising the song's arrangements and Beyoncé's vocals. A music video was directed by Charlie Robins and it depicted a woman and a man chasing each other underwater. Commercially, the track has reached number one in France and Scotland, the top 10 in the Czech Republic, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and the top 20 in Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
Background
On 16 September 2015, Naughty Boy announced that he would release a song titled "Runnin' " featuring Beyoncé and Arrow Benjamin. On the same date he shared the artwork for the single, its lyrics, a 15-second sound snippet along with a video through his Instagram account and began a countdown until its online release. The video consisted of two humans floating alone, submerged underwater. The following day, on 17 September 2015, "Runnin'" premiered online. It was available for digital download on the iTunes Store on 18 September 2015. According to Digital Spy, a version of the song lacking Beyoncé's vocals leaked online in August 2015. The song was used in the trailer for the 2017 film Everything, Everything.
Composition
"Runnin' " is a power ballad featuring elements of drum and bass. It was noted by Elle Hunt of The Guardian to be established in the genre of British dance music. The song's composition consists of melancholy piano keys. It opens with Beyoncé singing the first verse over a piano track with lyrics such as "Nothing else matters now; you're not here. So where are you? I've been calling you, missing you". Following the hook, the song's tempo increases and "Runnin'" continues with a garage break afterwards. During the chorus, Beyoncé sings about how she will stop running from herself as she repeats the lines "Ain't running from myself no more". The second verse is sung by Arrow Benjamin and the last chorus is sung as a duet between both singers. Eric Renner Brown from Entertainment Weekly further found "typically soulful Beyoncé lyrics". Elle Hunt of The Guardian compared the song with Beyoncé's own "Halo" and "Haunted" as well as Naughty Boy's previous collaborations with singer Emeli Sandé.
Critical reception
Elle Hunt from The Guardian praised "Runnin'" as "a shimmery club classic, the kind we've seen plenty of in the past 20 years". CBS News writer Andrea Park dubbed Beyoncé's vocals as "unmistakeable". Exclaim!s Alex Hudson also described the singer's voice as "powerful". Laura Bradley of Slate magazine noted that Beyoncé opened the song with "the kind of force few other singers can muster". She further compared it with the singer's own "XO", due to their reminiscent "triumphant, love-conquers-all spirit".
The music video for the song was directed by Charlie Robins. It was released on Naughty Boy's official Vevo account on 18 September 2015. It features freedivers Guillaume Néry and Alice Modolo as a man and a woman underwater running towards each other, trying to reunite. The video is inspired by the short film Ocean Gravity. Discussing the conception of the video, Robins said: "In order to achieve the effect we were after we had to film in the middle of a fast, deep and quite dangerous current through a lagoon, this gave us the forward momentum you see in the film. They didn’t use tanks for air so everything you see in the film was done holding their breath, sometimes up to six minutes at a time. I still can’t quite believe how they do it. No CGI was used. Quite something." The video was filmed at Rangiroa, an atoll northeast of Tahiti in French Polynesia. The video was choreographed by Julie Gaultier, who co-directed Ocean Gravity with Néry, and was shot over four days. A Time magazine writer described the clip as "a very serene underwater adventure". Alex Hudson from Exclaim! wrote that the visuals depicted a "dramatic underwater romance". Laura Bradley of Slate interpreted the video as "a surreal take on a classic premise — two people search for one another across great distances, and finally come together in an embrace". "Runnin' " won a Bronze Lion award in the Excellence In Music Video category at the inaugural Cannes Lions Entertainment for Music, on 24 June 2016.
Usage in media
The song is featured in the trailer to the 2017 film Everything, Everything. In August 2017, the song was also featured in the background for Chanel's "Gabrielle" television campaigns.
