The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #141

#141: "Run to Me" (2006) - Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs



I've listed several cover songs on this list, and this isn't the last one, but this is one that surpasses the original (by the Bee Gees), and this one almost solely by the strength of the one of the lead singers. Sweet's piano and acoustic guitar work are well-textured here, but he's not the star of the show. Hoffs is, and she's magnificient. Her voice has improved since she sang lead for the (much underrated) Bangles: she's not as tinny, her range seems to have somehow broadened (which usually doesn't happen at this stage of a singer's life), and she sings with more nuance than before. She showcases amazing timbre control, and her tone is spot-on, mixing breathiness, vibratto, and power with seamless grace.

The production is excellent, mirroring the production of the decade after which the song was written, adding a chorus effect, which--especially in the beginning of the song--gives Hoffs voice the sound of some voice from the hereafter, a goddess offering reassurance from the heavens, maybe even the voice of a mother, the voice of unconditional love, a muse, like Kate Bush in Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up," a voice telling us that Tom Wolfe was wrong, that we can come home again, the voice of the image of the mother running through the fields to embrace her son in A Trip to Bountiful; Hoffs surpasses the purely romantic notions of the lyric and elevates the song into something more all-encompassing, as when she's singing the verses mean nothing, as the only words that matter are in the chorus, the words that she surrounds with elegance and compassion and steadfastness and blessed assurance, the words that promise shelter from the storm, that can assuage primal fear, by encircling us in loving arms and voice, a voice that lets me know that though doom may be sweeping down upon the world, that I'll be safe, that my world won't end, that when the bough breaks--and it will, 'cause in that song, it always does, doesn't it--and the cradle falls, that she'll be there to catch me, big beard and all.