Run Like Hell
by Pink Floyd
- 116
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 66
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
By the time Pink Floyd recorded "Run Like Hell" for The Wall in 1979, the band was close to its last work as a four-piece. It was the last song written by both David Gilmour and Roger Waters, and the last one recorded by all four members of the 1970s lineup.
Waters wrote the first version with his own music, but it was scrapped in favor of Gilmour's during the band demos. Both versions appear on the Immersion box set. Gilmour's music used drop-D tuning with chords built on a D root, and he said he was trying to imitate the chopping cellos of "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys. Waters sang the lead, while Gilmour's multitracked voice chanted "Run, run, run, run". Richard Wright played the only keyboard solo on the album, a synthesizer line over the verse sequence.
Sound effects added to the paranoia: cruel laughter, running footsteps, skidding tires and a loud scream. The lyrics came from the point of view of Pink, who hallucinates that he is a fascist dictator and turns a concert audience into a violent mob. Released as a single in 1980, it reached number 15 in Canada, number 18 in Sweden and number 53 in the US.
Run Like Hell runs at 116 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.07 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 517 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
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