Garbage - Run Baby Run

Wed 8th Jun, 2005 in Music Reviews

After a three year hiatus from playing and recording in which the band temporarily broke up, Garbage are back with their fourth album Bleed Like Me. Run Baby Run is the second single released from the album and as can be expected from such a band, the song is a fine display of accessible rock pop.

It starts off with spiraling guitars and launches into a mid paced, glam rock anthem. The chorus gets bigger and more emphatic as the song progresses, and a wall of sound increasingly builds to drive the rhythm all the way to the end. Formidable frontwoman Shirley Manson, pleads and urges in her vocal delivery, creating a sense of importance and desperation in the lyrics.

Manson was quoted saying that the song “is about escape and engineering your own path in life. We’re all too guilty of thinking that peace, love and healthiness are things that we’re just given”. (Rip and Burn Magazine, April 2005)

This is clear in the lyric,

“Find out who you are before you regret it,
‘Cause life is so short there’s no time to waste it”.

The driving guitar riffs and rumbling bass accompany Manson’s vocals and hammer her message home.

Run Baby Run is stripped back of the samples that have dominated a lot of Garbage’s previous work, especially on the 2001 album, Beautiful Garbage. This single is dark and raw and it makes you want to tap your feet to the groove. It is a good example of Garbage ditching polished production for emotion, however, this song is not as memorable as sparkling pop gems of earlier times, such as I’m Only Happy When It Rains.