Peak
9
Weeks
22
Score
2,819
Chart Year
1982
This is the opening song of the album, which is a concept piece about an alien invasion of Earth. The song itself describes a person seeing an attractive female - he becomes anxious and wants to run away from his feelings but he can't forget her. Then they are both abducted by the aliens. The imaginative (for the time) video broke the band in the US during the early days of MTV. The video was directed by Anthony Van Den Ende, who later did Killing Joke's "Eighties" and Melissa Etheridge's "Like the Way I Do" and "Bring Me Some Water." The video shows lead singer Mike Score in a room covered from floor to ceiling with aluminum foil and also floor mirrors in which you can see the reflection of the cameras. Along with Duran Duran, Thompson Twins, and ABC, A Flock of Seagulls was a British pop band who owed their American success almost entirely to MTV. Mike Score, along with the band's bass player Frank Maudsley, were hairdressers, and they put their skills to use in creating that distinctive hairstyle that not only defined the group, but entered the pop culture landscape - witness Samuel L. Jackson's character Jules get a cleverly coiffed young man's attention by yelling "Hey, Flock of Seagulls!" in the movie Pulp Fiction. The video cost just £5,000 to make, but it gave a huge return. For Score, the novelty wore off quickly, as his hair was much more famous than he was. He rarely got to talk about his music because interviewers were always asking about the hair. Lead singer Mike Score recalled the day he wrote the song to Billboard: "We'd just been to the Cavern in Liverpool and saw a band play a song called 'I Ran' and thought, 'What a great name,' although we didn't particularly like the song. And then the next day saw a picture from the 1950s of a flying saucer and two people running away from it. And because we had this sci-fi thing going on, it was like 'look at that! First 'I Ran' and now that!' So even though we had the basics of the music already, we went to rehearsal that night and the picture was in my head and we started to try to formulate words about that. And when I'm playing live, that picture comes back into my mind. And of course movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the flying saucer coming out of the clouds, that contributed to lyrics, and all that comes through your mind and it makes you smile." Flock leader Mike Score said in a VH1 interview: "Every time I perform live, everyone just wants to hear 'I Ran'... I'm sick of it!" He softened his stance when he spoke with Songfacts in 2018. "I don't think it's the best song we've got, although it was the biggest hit. I have moments where I think 'Space Age" target="_blank">Space Age' is a lot better, or 'Wishing' is a lot better. It depends on the mood I'm in, or the emotional state I'm in at the time. But I like to play it live, because the crowd loves it. Especially at nostalgia gigs like this tour, you want to give people what they remembered, and they remember 'I Ran,' and they all get into it and have a great time. It puts a big smile on your face." This was A Flock Of Seagulls biggest hit in the US, but in the UK they enjoyed a bigger hit with "Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)," which reached #10. The band was not named after their hairstyles, but after a combination of a book title and a lyric. Mike Score was a big fan of the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, and of The Stranglers, whose song "Toiler On The Sea" has the refrain: "A flock of seagulls." When this song does appear in movies, it's often in jokey reference to the time period. It shows up in the 1998 film Edge of Seventeen, which is set in 1984, and in the 1999 film The Suburbans, about an '80s cover band. In the 2016 film La La Land, Ryan Gosling's jazz-snob character ends up playing keyboards in an '80s cover band, and Emma Stone's character torments him by requesting this song and dancing along to it as he's forced to play it. The band Bowling For Soup covered this on the 2003 re-release of their album Drunk Enough To Dance. Other acts to cover it include Cranial Screwtop and Assemblage 23. This is the theme song of the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and was used in the TV advertisements for that game. A portion of the song was used as the opening for the cartoon Knights of the Zodiac. >>
I walk along the avenue I never thought I'd meet a girl like you Meet a girl like you With auburn hair and tawny eyes The kind of eyes that hypnotize me through Hypnotize me through And I ran I ran so far away I just ran I ran all night and day I couldn't get away A cloud appears above your head A beam of light comes shining down on you Shining down on you The cloud is moving nearer still Aurora Borealis comes in view Aurora comes in view And I ran I ran so far away I just ran I ran all night and day I couldn't get away Reached out a hand to touch your face You're slowly disappearing from my view 'Pearing from my view Reached out a hand to try again I'm floating in a beam of light with you Beam of light with you And I ran I ran so far away I just ran I ran all night and day And I ran I ran so far away I just ran I couldn't get away And I ran I ran so far away I just ran I ran all night and day And I ran
| Week | Chart Date | Position | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jul 10, 1982 | 86 | 40 |
| 2 | Jul 17, 1982 | 76 | 50 |
| 3 | Jul 24, 1982 | 66 | 60 |
| 4 | Jul 31, 1982 | 59 | 67 |
| 5 | Aug 7, 1982 | 52 | 74 |
| 6 | Aug 14, 1982 | 49 | 77 |
| 7 | Aug 21, 1982 | 45 | 81 |
| 8 | Aug 28, 1982 | 43 | 83 |
| 9 | Sep 4, 1982 | 37 | 89 |
| 10 | Sep 11, 1982 | 30 | 96 |
| 11 | Sep 18, 1982 | 26 | 100 |
| 12 | Sep 25, 1982 | 21 | 105 |
| 13 | Oct 2, 1982 | 14 | 112 |
| 14 | Oct 9, 1982 | 10 | 116 |
| 15 | Oct 16, 1982 | 10 | 116 |
| 16 | Oct 23, 1982 | 9 | 117 |
| 17 | Oct 30, 1982 | 9 | 117 |
| 18 | Nov 6, 1982 | 16 | 110 |
| 19 | Nov 13, 1982 | 65 | 61 |
| 20 | Nov 20, 1982 | 87 | 39 |