Whether you’re running outside or just you’re ruling the way that I move/and I breathe your air, best running songs blown goal. That’s why we’re putting together 90-minute playlists each month chock-full of songs with enough of a beat to keep you moving. For even more tunes, check out our list of the best running songs.
My book Nikki Hiltz Shares Their Favorite Workout Songs is an attempt to come to terms with running as a means of hearing music better.
Of course, running is good enough on its own; it doesn’t need music, so I don’t always listen while I run. Still, I’ve been a music critic for half my life, so the idea of “hearing music better,” or at least in a way that feels new to me, is often on my mind.
Some years ago, while running around my neighborhood in the Bronx, I made the rather obvious discovery that music doesn’t have to serve running. In other words, it doesn’t have to be used purely as a tool of motivation, for staving off boredom, The Best Songs to Add to Your Playlist this Month pace.
(I should add that I don’t run for pace, speed, or distance, which is to say I don’t train, except perhaps to become a better listener. I run four to 12 miles nearly every day—as measured by a vague sense of how long I’ve been out—and I consider it a practice, or even a ritual.)
Rather, running can serve music, or simply clarify it. By running a song, you might listen to it better, to the point of embodying the music, of accessing its insides and essence, and, possibly, temporarily, becoming it.
Running and listening—or, if you like, Ben Ratliff, a writer and runner, is the author of books including—have much in common. Let’s start with the word “track.” Consider that running is rhythmic, and that music—even very slow or quiet music, whatever the bpms—contains some crucial, critical quality of motion. Music tends to suggest its own atmosphere to a listener, which might converge with the physical atmosphere through which the listener runs. Remember that both practices involve following a path, moving headlong into the near future, and staying aware.
While writing Run the Song, I generally listened to a whole piece or interconnected pieces as I ran—an entire album, a long dance music DJ set, a suite or symphony, or just an hour or two of the same musician’s work. Often I’d listen to music I didn’t know or barely knew. Listening broadly, across traditions and continents and centuries, is important to me—it keeps me away from the feeling that I know enough. I’d rather be curious.
I want to learn from music, I want to be challenged and even confused within it—and if that sounds intellectual, running makes the practice natural. When, other than while running, is a person more ready to feel new feelings, think new thoughts? You’re on the move; you’re open, alive, connection-making, problem-solving. You’re in an ideal state to listen.
This playlist keeps switching around. It lasts about an average daily running length for me. The jumps in style and tradition are deliberate and, in fact, only a few of the tracks come from the book—Telemann for balance and greeting the day; Ice Spice for her breath control and hard persistence; Sade for the tempo and a revelatory lyric suited to the task—“you’re ruling the way that I move/and I breathe your air.”
The rest are songs I hear flying out of car windows in my neighborhood, or music that has to do with desire and movement, calm and conviction, surging and easing down, and, always, breath: like Iggy Pop’s inhaling the world and then expelling it with a scream, in the Stooges’ “T.V. Eye.” I hope you’ll hear something unfamiliar here, and run it.
Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening
you’re ruling the way that I move/and I breathe your air
Whether you’re running outside or just
Running Music Playlists Ben Ratliff, a writer and runner, is the author of books including and Advertisement - Continue Reading Below, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A former music critic for the New York Times, he lives in New York City and teaches at New York University. A playlist of nearly all the music written about in Run the Song can be found here. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1KKJ1gDCGqpWOxnVjHC4HR?si=CJnOfFP_RyKK7g-sshkcwQ&pi=fO-_RFU7R0-a_
