Running Music: Tom Petty 'Runnin' Down A Dream'

Click here for previous songs and a short explanation as to why I’m writing about music on a running blog.

Song 5:

Tom Petty ‘Runnin’ Down A Dream’

It’s one of the signs that something is beginning to take over your life when you start to dream about it.

Some people take analysing dreams very seriously. I expect if you thought about it you know at least one person that obsesses about the meaning of what went on in their head whilst asleep a little too much.

I’m no psychologist, nor am I a dreamologist (or whatever they’d be called), but I’ve always thought dreams were a mish mash of random recent thoughts, conversations and experiences you’d had. If you deconstruct the last dream you can remember, I expect you could trace each part to something from the past few days. The closest I get to the analytical is to say, no matter how small the thing you trace back to might seem, the likelihood is it relates to something, or someone, who is important to you in some way, be that positive or negative. Hence why it’s stored away in your subconscious, coming out to play when your brain lets its guard down.

As marathon training is a large part of my life right now, it stands to reason that it will be appearing in dreams. The twist might be that I run the marathon with a friend it occurred to me the other day I’d not seen for a while, or maybe a character in a book I’m reading. The latter would give me a choice of either
Winney the Pooh or
David Bumble Lloyd from the past week. Perhaps, combining Pooh Bear, Bumble and my football team of choice, I might dream I’m on a training run being chased by a swarm of bees. Incidentally, the obsessive dream analyst would at this point, go off on one about trying to run away from the pressures of everyday life. “That dream means you need to get away from it all, need to make significant changes to your life”, or some other such rubbish.

All this, in a round about way, leads into this week’s song choice – don’t mention roundabouts or I’ll dream about
Zebedee tonight, or Milton Keynes!

‘Runnin’ Down A Dream’ is taken from ‘Full Moon Fever’, Tom Petty’s first solo album (minus the Heartbreakers).

Released in 1989, the track was sandwiched by two of Petty’s best known singles, ‘I Won’t Back Down’ and ‘Free Fallin’.

The song has been used to promote a number of sports in the US, most notably as the theme song for the
NBA (National Basketball Association) finals.