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Sai Dore

Professor Slye

Eng 1201

2/21/21

Analysis of “Run” by Snow Patrol and Leona Lewis

Snow Patrol is a Scottish rock band who rose to fame in the early 2000s during the

Britpop movement (bright, alternative rock). They released their song “Run” in 2003, with the

video being published six years later. Leona Lewis, a British pop singer famous for her album

Spirit and single “Bleeding Love,” released a cover of “Run” in 2007 and the subsequent video

in 2009. Although the cover largely maintains the same theme, the mourning of the end of a

relationship, and relies more subtly on the video, it is still a refreshing version of the original

song. Lewis instills a new energy into the song through her vocal performance and provides a

different perspective of the relationship, which allows a younger female audience to experience

the song.

Snow Patrol’s video is about a man mourning the demise of his relationship. The video

begins with a man walking through the woods with his motorbike, until he ditches the bike, grabs

a torch and starts waving it around. This symbolizes his call to be heard by his lover, as he feels

they are drifting apart and may not ever see each other again. This cycle repeats one more time,

until he grabs his motorcycle, rides it around for a bit, and burns it, signaling the downfall of his

relationship.

The claim Snow Patrol is making is that healing takes time and energy and even though

he should remember the good memories, he shouldn’t latch on to the past because it only

increases the trauma. The lyrics “Even if you cannot hear my voice, I’ll be right beside you,
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dear” represents him trying to hold on to what he once had, and throughout the video he wanders

through the woods, trying to process his trauma and the broken relationship. But when he says

“All I want’s to find an easy way to get out of our little heads,” he finally realizes that what he

needs is to break free from the emotional pain. In the end, he finally achieves internal peace as he

burns his motorcycle and dumps it in the river, severing the connection that he once treasured.

Four years after Snow Patrol released “Run”, Leona Lewis put out a stunning rendition of

the song, along with a video. Lewis’ lyrics are largely the same as the original’s, except that the

last verse is missing, and her video is about a woman singing her parting song to her lover. The

video starts with Lewis singing while walking through the fields, until the video transitions to her

walking through a dark and gloomy forest. Then, Lewis’ emotions become too much to handle

and she falls on her knees. But she overcomes this pain when she stops singing and walks to

where she can see the city skyline, where she reminisces on what she just went through. Finally,

she looks at the camera and lets out a sigh of relief, showing viewers what it took for her to

express what she’s feeling.

Lewis’ video was more subtle than Snow Patrol’s, but she uses imagery to perfectly

express what she wants to convey. Lewis walking alone through the woods shows how lonely

she feels and how haunted the outside world is, and her looking at the skyline represents her

looking back on her relationship. And her walking through the fields represents how empty the

world is and how nobody seems to be there to help her. Her lyrics help emphasize these points,

like when she sings “Louder louder, and we'll run for our lives,” which shows that she just wants

to escape from all of the pain and loneliness and disappear to where she can be free.

Both songs use pathos to highlight their claims. Lewis’ songwriting talks about her hope

for the future in the midst of the relationship’s downfall and her singing shows the emotional
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pain she is in. Lewis singing “To think I might not see those eyes makes it so hard not to cry”

indicates this, as she is having trouble dealing with reality and the heartbreak that comes with it.

Snow Patrol’s version also relies on their lyrics to emphasize the difficulty of coping with pain,

but their extra verse encourages people in the same situation to have faith and concentrate on

finding peace. The lyrics “Have heart, my dear, we're bound to be afraid” hammers this point

home as he acknowledges that the road to peace isn’t smooth, but if they believe that they will

get through it then they will.

Because of Lewis’ vocal abilities and because a different perspective of the relationship

was gained, a new audience was able to experience the song and music video. The original song

and video appealed to more of an older audience, as the music is more rock-oriented and similar

to what the stereotypical older male would listen to. By contrast, Lewis’ version of the song is

more pop-oriented which appeals to a younger and more of a female audience.

Lewis’ perspective as a woman also allows viewers to see how she might react

differently. For example, Lewis didn’t handle any torches and didn’t react aggressively,

suggesting that she handles these situations with a calmer attitude and showing viewers that they

don’t need to resort to physical violence to get closure. This also shows viewers that everyone

reacts to situations differently and even if people are not expressive about the way they feel, they

still may feel emotionally distressed. This appeals to the younger generation because they are

more likely to relate to what Lewis is going through and understand why she reacted the way she

did.

Overall, Leona Lewis’ cover of “Run” by Snow Patrol adds a new energy through Lewis’

ability to elicit emotions from the audience. Her vocal abilities, lyrics, and the subtlety of her

music video all made her version distinct from the original. And Lewis providing a different
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perspective of the relationship, coupled with the fact that the cover was more pop-oriented,

allowed a whole new audience to experience the magic of the song.

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Works Cited

Snow Patrol. “Run (Official Video).” Youtube, 26 June 2009,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOBs8dU4Pb8

Lewis, Leona. “Run (Official Video).” Youtube, 15 Nov 2009,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpAgMxhx30