The Runaway Train Playlist

I am going to enter this in the Runaway Train Vocal challenge , see below for information. I got the idea from Melissa Balick on a thread in Great Incantations, the Facebook Group for Vocal Challenges.

So you are now on a Runaway Train and I am your driver, inspector and anything else. These songs all involve trains and there are probably millions out there, and where I can I will include a YouTube video of the said song.

But to kick off I will go super obvious:

1: Runaway Train by Vernon Dalhart

This is just the children’s song that everyone knows , you will know it it doesn’t really address the concept of how scary a runaway train would actually be.

2: Runaway Train - Soul Asylum

I always loved this song and it is an absolute beauty, but again does not hold any threat just a great sense of melancholy.

3: Runaway Train - John Stewart

This is another beautiful melancholy song with a distinctive plucked electric guitar sound. This was written by John and covered by Roseanne Cash which you can listen to below.

4: Runaway Train - Ian Cussick

With a bare synthesiser back line and eighties power ballad vocals I can see that this will be a favourite of many but not me.

5: Runaway Train - Elton John and Eric Clapton

From Elton John's 1992 album "The One." It was also released as a single. Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics specifically as a duet for Elton with Eric Clapton.

6: Runaway Train - Roseanne Cash

As I compile this list I am thinking it just may be songs called “Runaway Train”, we shall see if that is true by the end. The lyrics to this are amazing and the performance stunning with a beautiful clipped electric guitar sound. A cover of the John Stewart song.

7: Runaway Train - Avantasia

A lovely piano based intro before the huge power ballad kicks in but still acceptable.

8: Runaway Train - Boy George and Culture Club

This is a great song which I was unaware of. Definitely need to listen to this one.

9: Runaway Train - Jamie N Commons, Skylar Grey & Gallant

This is a good cover of the Soul Asylum song . Here are the details and it tells me something I didn’t know about the Soul Asylum song.

“To see missing kids from your area go to RunawayTrain25.com and help bring them home.

25 years ago, Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train” music video featured images of missing children, and helped recover 21 of them. How many can we find with today’s technology and social media?

For the 25th anniversary of Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train”, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), Jamie N Commons, Skylar Grey, and Gallant created a new version of the music video.”

10: Runaway Train - The Green

That is ten different songs with the same title addressing the subject of this playlist. (I know one is a cover of another)

This is a reggae song about losing a love and after this I am going to include some other archetypal train titles, seriously you can have a train song for every letter of the alphabet and this story has become a runaway train of “Runaway Trains” which I did not expect when I started it.

11: Smokestack Lightnin’ - Howlin’ Wolf

The Song is about a train going by and he sings about watching its sparks coming out of the smokestack. Wolf said he learned all he needed when working on the fields of Mississippi, where he grew up. For him that train represented gold, freedom and the world passing by, as he was stuck in Mississippi.

12: Downtown Train - Tom Waits

This is a beautiful way to close this mad playlist. Listen to this and enjoy the unexpected beauty of Tom Waits singing.

“Will I See You Tonight?”