Monday music, week 2. (Runaway train)

Sitting with this song

There are some songs you don’t just listen to once or during a certain phase. They stay with you. They come and go, but they never really leave your orbit.

Runaway Train by Soul Asylum is one of those songs for me. I listen to it a lot. Not always consciously, and not always because I’m in a bad place. It’s just there, waiting, like something familiar I know I can return to when my thoughts start getting louder than everything else.

It’s become part of the background of certain moments in my life. Quiet mornings. Long walks. Times when I’m doing fine on the surface but feel slightly disconnected underneath. The song doesn’t change, but the way it lands does. Some days it feels heavy. Other days it feels grounding. Sometimes it just feels honest.

What keeps pulling me back is how steady it is. It doesn’t rise and fall dramatically. It doesn’t demand anything from you. It just keeps moving forward at the same pace, carrying this low hum of exhaustion and persistence at the same time. That combination feels painfully familiar.

Listening to it often hasn’t softened its impact. If anything, it’s made it clearer. Each time, it seems to understand a little more about where I am. Not in a comforting way, but in a way that says, I see this part of you too. The part that’s tired. The part that’s still showing up. The part that doesn’t need fixing, just acknowledging.

This isn’t a song I save for my worst days. It’s a song that exists alongside me through the ordinary ones. And that’s exactly why it matters so much.

The song itself

Runaway Train by Soul Asylum doesn’t rush you. From the first few seconds, it settles into a steady, almost tired pace, like it already knows where it’s going and doesn’t have the energy to pretend otherwise.

There’s nothing flashy about it. The instrumentation stays restrained, never trying to overwhelm the lyrics. It feels deliberate, like everything has been stripped back to make room for the words. The melody moves forward calmly, even when what’s being said underneath it isn’t calm at all.

Vocally, there’s a sense of weariness that runs through the song. Not despair exactly, but fatigue. The kind that comes from carrying something for a long time. It sounds like someone who’s been thinking the same thoughts over and over, trying to make sense of them while knowing there may not be a clear answer waiting at the end.

The train metaphor does a lot of quiet work here. A runaway train isn’t dramatic in the way people imagine. It doesn’t explode straight away. It keeps moving, faster than you can control, taking you further from where you started while you watch it happen. The song mirrors that feeling. It keeps going at the same pace, never slowing down to let you step off.

What makes it unsettling is how gentle it all feels. There’s no anger, no panic, no big emotional release. Just momentum. Just continuation. The sense that life is happening whether you’re ready for it or not.

The lyrics never offer resolution. They circle the same ideas again and again, like thoughts you can’t quite quiet. Feeling lost. Feeling disconnected. Wanting to go back, but not knowing how. It’s repetitive in a way that feels intentional, echoing the mental loops that come with feeling stuck inside your own head.

By the time the song ends, nothing has changed. There’s no breakthrough moment. No sudden clarity. And that’s exactly why it lingers. It doesn’t try to fix the feeling. It just names it and lets it exist.

And what makes Runaway Train even heavier is what it became once it left the studio. This wasn’t just a song people related to in private. It ended up reaching people in a very real, tangible way. The music video famously included photos of missing children and teenagers, with names and “missing since” details on screen. Different versions of the video ran in different places, so the missing kids shown could match the area where it aired, like the song was trying to reach into real life and pull someone back.

It’s hard to explain what that would have felt like at the time if you didn’t live through it. Music videos weren’t just background noise. MTV was everywhere. So you’d be watching late at night and suddenly you’re not just hearing a song about feeling lost, you’re seeing actual faces. Kids. Teenagers. People who might still be out there. It turned the song into something more than a metaphor. “Runaway” stopped being a poetic idea and became a real thing happening to real people.

And it worked. Over time, the band and the director have said that 21 of the 36 missing kids featured were found, because someone saw the video and recognised them. That number alone is staggering. Not in a neat, feel-good way, because some stories don’t end neatly, and some don’t end at all. But it changed the meaning of the song. It gave it another kind of weight. Like the song was holding two versions of “lost” at once. The internal kind, the kind you can’t always describe. And the literal kind, where someone is missing and a family is waiting.

I think that’s why it has stayed with people for so long. Because it isn’t just a sad song that sounds nice. It’s a song that understands something about isolation and disappearance, and somehow managed to turn that into connection. It made people pay attention. It made people look twice. It made people care. And for a lot of listeners back then, it also did the quieter thing. It made them feel less alone, at a time when nobody was really talking openly about mental health, numbness, or that frightening sense of watching your life happen from the outside.

The power of music is stronger than any of us realise.

Living with the runaway train

For me, this song isn’t just a metaphor. It’s a feeling I know well.

Depression has never been a single moment in my life. It’s been a presence. Something that follows me, quietly, like a shadow, I’m always aware of even when the light looks good from the outside. You don’t outrun it. You don’t leave it behind. You just keep moving and hope it doesn’t catch up too loudly.

That’s where the runaway train image really lands for me. Depression feels less like falling apart and more like losing control while everything keeps going. You’re still moving through your days. Still doing what’s expected. Still turning up. But inside, it can feel like you’re watching your life pass by through a window you can’t open.

There’s a particular exhaustion that comes with that. Not the kind sleep fixes. The kind that comes from constantly managing your own thoughts, constantly checking yourself, constantly trying to stay ahead of something that doesn’t ever fully go away. You’re running, but you don’t know where the brakes are.

What makes this song hard, and also necessary for me, is that it doesn’t pretend there’s a moment where it all stops. It doesn’t suggest you’ll suddenly regain control or step off safely. It reflects the truth of living with depression long-term. The truth that sometimes all you can do is stay on the train and keep going.

And some days, that’s not poetic or brave. It’s just survival. But it still counts.

The words the song circles around

What stays with me about Runaway Train isn’t one specific line. It’s the way the lyrics keep circling the same ideas, like thoughts that won’t settle.

Feeling lost.
Feeling behind.
Wanting to go back, but not knowing where “back” even is.

The song doesn’t say these things once and move on. It repeats them. That repetition feels intentional. It mirrors how your mind works when you’re struggling, how the same thoughts come back again and again, no matter how much you try to distract yourself or push forward.

There’s a quiet honesty in that. The lyrics don’t try to resolve themselves. They don’t build toward clarity or relief. They just exist in that unsettled space, acknowledging how disorienting it is to feel disconnected from your own life.

That’s what makes the song hit so hard for me. It understands that sometimes there isn’t a neat sentence that sums things up. Sometimes all you have are fragments of thought, half-formed feelings, and a sense that you’re moving without really knowing why.

Listening to it feels like being inside that loop for a few minutes, not trapped, but seen. Like the song is saying, this confusion makes sense. And for someone living with depression, that kind of recognition matters more than reassurance ever could.

What this song gives me

This song doesn’t pull me out of anything. It doesn’t snap me back into place or offer some kind of clarity. What it does instead is quieter, and somehow more important.

It sits with me.

When I’m close to the edge, when my thoughts start tightening in on themselves, Runaway Train reminds me that I’m not the first person to feel this way. That other people have carried this same weight and kept moving, even when they didn’t know where they were headed.

There’s something grounding in that. Not hopeful, exactly, but steady. The song doesn’t tell me to be positive or strong or grateful. It just acknowledges the momentum. The fact that life keeps going, and so do you, even when you’re tired of keeping up.

On my harder days, that’s enough to pull me back a step. Not into happiness, not into certainty, but into presence. Into staying. Into listening instead of spiralling.

The world doesn’t stop when you’re struggling. It keeps moving, indifferent and relentless. And as strange as it sounds, that thought helps me. If everything is going to keep moving anyway, I may as well keep moving with it. Even slowly. Even unevenly.

This song doesn’t save me. But it reminds me to stay. And most days, that matters more.

Why does this belongs here?

I chose Runaway Train for Monday Music because Mondays don’t need fixing. They need honesty.

The start of the week can feel relentless. Everything picks back up again whether you’re ready or not. Expectations return. Routines restart. And if you’re already carrying something heavy, that forward motion can feel overwhelming.

This song meets that moment without trying to change it. It doesn’t motivate or distract. It doesn’t pretend the weight isn’t there. It just acknowledges the movement, the continuation, the fact that life keeps going and somehow, so do you.

For me, Monday Music is about creating a small, steady pause before the week fully takes hold. A moment to check in with where I actually am, not where I think I should be. Runaway Train fits that space perfectly. It understands what it’s like to keep moving without feeling in control, and it doesn’t judge you for it.

If you’re carrying something into this week, you don’t have to carry it quietly. You don’t have to make it neat or hopeful or productive. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is acknowledge where you are, press play, and stay.

That’s what this song does for me. And that’s why it belongs here.

Songs you’re carrying into the week

One of the things I want Monday Music to become is something shared.

Music has a way of meeting us where we are, but we all arrive at Mondays carrying different things. Different histories. Different weights. Different reasons for pressing play.

Each week, I’ll be opening this space up to your suggestions too. Songs that help you ease into the week. Songs you come back to when things feel heavy, quiet, or uncertain. Songs that don’t need explaining, but mean something to you all the same.

I’ll add a selection of reader suggestions here, alongside my own, so this doesn’t just reflect where I am, but where we are, together, moving into another week in our own ways.

Each week, I invite you to share a song that helps you ease into Mondays, something grounding, familiar, or quietly meaningful. There’s no theme you have to follow and no reason you need to explain. If it matters to you, it belongs here.

Here are a few songs you’re carrying into this week:

When this song was suggested, I found myself hearing it less as a personal story and more as someone looking ahead. Listen to the lyrics closely and carefully. Eighth Day feels like Hazel O’Connor watching the world chase progress, rockets to the moon, machines taking over, people always striving for more, and quietly questioning where it all ends. The “eighth day” feels like a future we keep reaching for, without stopping to think about what we might lose along the way. It doesn’t sound panicked. It sounds observant. Like someone paying attention early.

What struck me about this suggestion is how relevant it feels now. Eighth Day sounds like someone looking ahead and quietly questioning where all this striving leads. Rockets to the moon. Machines taking over. Progress for the sake of progress. Forty-six years later, we’re living inside that future. We have AI taking jobs, shaping how people think, and even replacing connection for some. It creates art, images, words, entire worlds, and in doing so, it sometimes strips away the very things that make us human. To me, this song feels like a warning sent early. That we build the systems we live inside. And eventually, we have to lie in the beds we make.

This one hits in a very quiet but heavy way. A Symptom of Being Human by Shinedown feels like someone finally saying the things most of us carry around but rarely admit out loud. The exhaustion. The doubt. The sense that you are trying your best and still coming up short. It does not frame these feelings as something to fix or overcome. It simply names them as part of being human. Listening to it feels like being seen in a moment where you did not realise you needed that. A reminder that feeling this way does not mean you are broken. It means you are here, feeling, and still going.

If you’d like to add to this, you can comment or message me with your song. You’re welcome to suggest something new each week. I’ll keep adding your picks here as Monday Music grows.

THEPLAINANDSIMPLEGUY

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