Runnin' With the Devil
by Van Halen
- 96
- BPM
- Ab minor
- Key
- 1A
- Camelot
- 48
- Danceability
- 15
- Acousticness
Before the first verse of "Runnin' with the Devil" there is a blast of car horns. They came from the cars of the band members. Van Halen mounted the horns in a box, powered it with two car batteries and wired in a foot switch. The idea began in their club sets and appeared on the Gene Simmons-recorded demo of the song. For the record, producer Ted Templeman slowed the horns down before adding them to the track.
The song came out in April 1978 as the second single from the band's debut album. The lyrics drew on Ohio Players' 1974 song "Runnin' from the Devil". Some listeners have taken them as satanic. The band has never revealed the full meaning, and it is usually read as being about the life of a touring young band. A four-measure guitar solo follows the second and third choruses, and at some point David Lee Roth lets out a "Yoww!"
In January 2016 Van Halen licensed it for advertising for the first time, when Acura used Roth's vocal ad-libs and Eddie Van Halen's riffs in a Super Bowl 50 commercial for the NSX. Alex Van Halen once said the song best epitomizes why Eddie was such a genius.
Runnin' With the Devil runs at 96 BPM, the tempo of hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.5 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 625 ms. It is in Ab minor, Camelot 1A, which shares its notes with B major and mixes cleanly with C# minor and Eb minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.