(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please refer to the "Poor Little Fool" post.)
Roy Orbison - "Running Scared"
Hit Number 1: June 5, 1961
Stay at Number 1: 1 Week
We all have those funny things that we thought were true when we were kids. One of my favorite examples of this is when my family would watch baseball games when me and my sister were young. When someone got ejected from the game, the announcer would say something like "Now he'll go back to the clubhouse", and my sister thought that that meant they would go back to a treehouse. Her idea of "clubhouse" was that it was a "treehouse" up in a tree. I actually have a few of these funny ideas but the one that is relevant to today's post, is that I thought Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley were the same person. Probably because their voices sounded so much alike, so I can't really blame my 7 or 8 year-old self.
I'm 22 now, and I still think that Orbison and Presley sound so much alike, and if I were to listen to a song I'd never heard of with one of those two singing, I might have no idea which one it was. Both were obviously very talented singers, and I don't think that Orbison ever had any intentions of ripping Elvis off or anything like that. His voice just so happened to sound like Presley's, and maybe, just maybe, that was one of the reasons why he was so popular. Though I think I will say that Orbison's voice is higher than Elvis'. Today's song, "Running Scared", could very well pass as an Elvis song, and I'm sure he would do just fine singing it himself. But after Elvis had numerous #1 hits, it was finally Orbison's time to shine, albeit just one week, and interrupting Ricky Nelson's "Travelin' Man's" two week reign at the top.
"Running Scared" is the biggest power ballad if there ever was one. An interesting fact about it is that it doesn't have a chorus. The song starts out soft, and continues to build itself up more and more until finally reaching the grand high note at the end. (At least high for a guy like Orbison) There had been ideas that the high note would end in a falsetto, but Fred Foster, who was the producer of the session, did not like that idea and would rather have seen the song end in a natural, full voice. I can't even picture the song ending in a falsetto, and every time I do, the sound in my head is bad. So I'm just gonna go ahead and say that Foster made a great call.
The song is about a guy who is dating this girl, but he lives in fear all the time that if they were to run into her ex, or if he wanted her back, she would abandon him and return to her ex. He's convinced that he has nothing on her ex, and he would be screwed if the ex wanted her back. Well, it eventually happens, as the song says "Then all at once, he was standing there". The song makes the ex seem mighty confident that she would abandon the narrator and go with him, as it describes "So sure of himself, his head in the air". The narrator is nervous as all hell, as he wonders to himself "My heart was breaking, which one would it be?" And then the punchline: "You turned around, and walked away with ME!" (The "me" is the grand high note at the end) So as it turned out, the guy had nothing to worry about after all.
Anyway, "Running Scared" is an amazing song. I always appreciate songs that start out so low and soft, before building themselves up more and more. We saw that earlier with "Mack the Knife", but a difference between "Running Scared" and "Mack the Knife" is that "Running Scared" is building up this whole time to a sort of "grand finale" at the end, with an aforementioned "punchline". The ending has all potential in the world to induce chills, and the song remains today as some of Orbison's finest work. And of course, it tells a short, but great story. The song was released on the album "Crying", with you guessed it, the hit "Crying" also on the album. ("Crying" made it up to #2. It's a 10) That song overshadows "Running Scared" a little bit, but "Running Scared" could never be forgotten. I mean how could it?
GRADE: 9/10
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