'Run the Song' explores the profound link between running and listening to music

Ben Ratliff’s "Run the Song" examines how movement enhances music’s emotional depth and personal meaning.

Illustration by Jason Reed

By Anna Fadiah and Hayu Andini

Ben Ratliff’s Run the Song is more than a meditation on exercise and playlists; it is an intimate exploration of how running transforms the experience of listening to music. In his latest book, Ratliff, a former New York Times jazz and pop critic, uses his personal journey to investigate the evolving relationship between physical movement and auditory perception. As he runs through the familiar woods of Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, New York, earphones in, he immerses himself in the complex sounds of Eric Dolphy’s At the Five Spot, recorded live in 1961.

While pounding the trails, Ratliff finds himself focusing on pianist Mal Waldron’s performance, which, to him, mirrors the uneven textures of the ground beneath his feet. Waldron’s piano playing, full of repetition and restraint, embodies a kind of persistence Ratliff deeply identifies with as he pushes forward. In Run the Song, he articulates how running intensifies the sensation of music’s motion, a realization that arrived only after years of daily runs and attentive listening.

The genesis of Run the Song

Ratliff’s initial steps into running were tentative. He began in 2012 during a visit to a friend in Maine, adopting the practice “skeptically” at first. Yet the habit quickly rooted itself into his daily life. Balancing his career at the New York Times with teaching writing and cultural criticism at New York University, Ratliff found that running offered a new framework for experiencing music—a connection he had not fully appreciated before.

By 2020, amid the global pandemic, this connection deepened. Running past a Covid-19 field hospital while listening to sound artist Maria U Rossi or passing a Black Lives Matter vigil accompanied by Eddie Kendricks’ soulful falsetto, Ratliff experienced firsthand how music and motion could anchor him amid widespread uncertainty and social unrest. Yet in Run the Song, he emphasizes that the true essence of his runs is not social commentary but a profound, solitary present: a “now, and now, and now” that binds movement and music in a single flow.

Shedding the critic’s skin

In his earlier work, Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty, Ratliff began moving away from traditional music criticism toward personal reflections on listening. With Run the Song, he continues this shift, setting aside the rigid expectations of formal critique.

He openly acknowledges a growing skepticism toward the conventional music review, confessing, “I was trained in the unit of the record review, but I have some doubt about it now.” For Ratliff, the goal is no longer to evaluate but to engage—to chase after music’s transient truths even as they continuously slip away. Music, he insists, cannot be captured in fixed descriptions because its very essence is its ongoing motion.

This evolving philosophy comes at a time when audiences are increasingly wary of traditional critics. Nevertheless, Ratliff’s work in Run the Song feels less like a defense of criticism and more like a personal manifesto on how to live with and through music.

What kind of listener and runner?

Throughout Run the Song, Ratliff probes two central questions: "What sort of listener am I?" and "What sort of runner am I?" He aspires to be the kind of listener open to all forms of sound—from Jimi Hendrix’s explosive Machine Gun to the serene devotional songs of M.S. Subbulakshmi. His listening habits, like his running routes, are exploratory rather than goal-driven, emphasizing curiosity over achievement.

As for running, Ratliff has no ambitions to conquer marathons or clock impressive times. Echoing sentiments similar to Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Ratliff finds fulfillment in simply running every day without identifying as an athlete. His musical choices for these runs defy conventional wisdom about ideal beats-per-minute for runners. Some days he listens to the aggressive energy of the Chicago hardcore band C.H.E.W.; other days, the delicate sounds of Takahashi Kuzan’s solo bamboo flute accompany him on the quietest of paths.

Running through musical landscapes

An especially vivid section of Run the Song describes Ratliff jogging through the Morrisania section of the Bronx, historically home to legends like Arsenio Rodríguez, Thelonious Monk, and Elmo Hope. Ratliff treats the neighborhood as a “shadow capital” of American music, suggesting that one can physically traverse musical history by simply running through these streets.

He devotes 20 minutes to listening to each artist while navigating the terrain that shaped their art, allowing the rhythms and melodies to color his perceptions of the environment. It is a striking illustration of how Run the Song intertwines geography, memory, and sound into a continuous, evolving experience.

Music, running, and letting go

At its heart, Run the Song is about surrendering control—both over listening and over movement. By listening to music while running, Ratliff steps outside his analytical mind, finding a more visceral, spiritual connection to sound.

This departure from constant self-awareness is something he believes would benefit not just professional critics but casual listeners as well. In relinquishing the urge to dissect music, Ratliff finds a deeper, more immediate relationship to it. His writing, much like his running, embraces the notion of "ongoingness"—a flowing middle space unbound by clear beginnings or endings.

He writes reverently about moments when a song seems to lose its structure, entering a “deep middle” that feels suspended in time. These moments, rare and fleeting, are what Ratliff chases both in his listening and in his daily runs.

The enduring motion of Run the Song

Run the Song concludes much as it begins: simply and quietly. Without elaborate fanfare, Ratliff describes turning off the music, slowing to a walk, and stopping. It is a subtle yet powerful metaphor for the themes that run through his book—the value of presence, the beauty of transience, and the profound connections formed when body, mind, and music move together.

Ben Ratliff’s Run the Song is not just a book about running or music; it is a meditation on how both practices can lead to greater self-awareness, deeper listening, and a more profound appreciation of life’s ongoing rhythms.