‘Runaway Train’: The most disturbing music video of all time
Music videos, as a medium, have always been contentious. Viewed by some as a way of integrating visual art with their music and others as a meaningless act of self-promotion, music videos really took off with the advent of MTV in the 1980s. Nowadays, few singles are released without an accompanying visual accompaniment. The landscape of promo videos ranges from hastily put-together live footage of a certain band to big-budget productions that feel like feature films. Music videos also have a much darker side too, with one unexpected track having perhaps the most disturbing video of all.
In the early 1980s, a young punk band from Minneapolis was making a name for itself. Soul Asylum received something of a cult following on the underground music scene in the 1980s, but the intense noise of their gigs caused lead singer Dave Pirner to believe he was losing his hearing. As a result, the frontman switched to acoustic guitar, and soon enough, the band’s stand-out track was born.
‘Runaway Train’ was originally penned about Pirner’s experience with depression, and it soon became one of the biggest hits of 1993, winning a Grammy Award and becoming a top ten hit in the UK, US and sixteen other countries. Using the motif of a runaway train as a metaphor for his spiralling mental state, Pirner was also inspired by his childhood love of the television show Casey Jones.
By the time ‘Runaway Train’ was released, MTV was at its peak in popularity. The pioneering television channel, at that time, predominantly showed music videos, as opposed to the variety of cookie-cutter reality shows that make up its content today. Looking to capitalise on the early success of their track, Soul Asylum were determined to create a music video for ‘Runaway Train’. Perhaps as a result of their early punk roots, however, the group were not content with a nondescript, generic video of themselves lip-syncing along to the song. Bringing onboard Tony Kaye as a director, the resulting video is one of the most disturbing and impactful in all of music video history.
Opening with text that reads, “There are over one million youth lost on the streets of America”, Soul Asylum treated the video as a means of raising awareness for young people who had run away from home or gone missing. Shots of the band performing were interspersed with photographs of real young people, their names, and the year they had gone missing. “On the way home from my office in Los Angeles, I saw a poster by the side of the road of a milk carton with a missing kid’s face on it”, explains Kaye, “I thought: ‘That’s it!’ I told Dave that I wanted to make a video featuring the faces of runaway or missing children.”
While very impactful and fairly disturbing, some good did come out of the video. Kaye revealed, “The record company were very supportive, although after it was first shown on MTV, they called saying: ‘No kids have come back. Can we replace the faces with shots of the band?’ I said: ‘No, wait’. Then one came back, and another, and another. And it turned into this miraculous thing”. What’s more, the band would cut and update the music video every time one of the featured children was found. Overall, the video led to 21 out of the 36 featured kids being found.
Of course, the remaining 15 young people who were not found have some truly terrifying stories. Murder, suicide, kidnapping, there is really no end to the disturbing nature of some of the stories of kids featured in the ‘Runaway Train’ music video. Yet, their harrowing photographs still remain on the video, waiting to be found.
