AURORA is celebrating the tenth anniversary of her breakthrough single ‘Runaway’ with a new documentary, Portrait Of A Song.
The documentary finds her in Norway, where the original ‘Runaway’ video – featuring the then 18-year-old running in the snow atop the mountains of Bergen – was filmed. With the same director, Kenny McCracken, Aurora revisits the same iconic locations, offering a glimpse into the places that shaped the artist’s music at a young age.
She has also released a new reworked orchestral version of the track to celebrate a decade of its existence.
Check it out below:
“A song I wrote when I was 11 has grown arms and legs on its own, and now it’s running around dancing with strangers,” she said in a press release. “Like it has found souls all around the globe to help keep it alive. Like most things, it’s up to us whether we let something die, or not. I now find myself wanting to do the same, to be as brave as my song, and dance with strangers as well.”
Taken from her acclaimed 2016 debut album ‘All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend’, the song catapulted the Norwegian singer-songwriter to global fame, racking up over 3billion streams across platforms. Billie Eilish even credited it as one of her main inspirations when she first got into music.
“When I was 12, I saw Aurora’s ‘Runaway’ music video,” she once told Vanity Fair. “Something inside me clicked, like, that is what I want to do, no matter whether it goes anywhere or not.”
In 2019, as part of NME‘s Song Stories series, AURORA explained what first inspired the song.
“I wrote ‘Runaway’ when I was 11-years-old,” she told NME. “It’s quite funny because the older I got, the more it made sense to me. It touched my heart, and now it reminds me of things that happened after I wrote it. It was kind of like a gift to myself.
“It’s weird, because my inspiration for the lyrics to ‘Runaway’ came out of nowhere. A few years later, something happened to me (well, the whole of Norway actually), and then the lyrics made so much sense to me. I sat in my house on the usual piano I always write on and it took like an hour, I think.”
She continued: “I remember it was completely quiet, it was grey outside. Not light, not dark, not dry, not wet, not cold, not warm – it was kind of one of those out of place kind of days. It was kind of like time was standing still.”
AURORA’s most recent album was ‘What Happened To The Heart?’, which came out last year. Speaking about the philosophy behind the title, she told NME: “The world has grown so accustomed to being apathetic. The truth has never been easier to share, but it’s also never been easier to manipulate either. AI was created without our consent; nobody asked us the people if we were ready to have something that big being thrown upon us. Now, so many things are going to change, which I don’t think we can yet grasp.
“Another true form of power is to manipulate people, to embarrass people, to lie; there’s so much that you can do with it that’s dangerous. People are so used to becoming overflooded by misinformation and information, and sadly we’re looking to our influencers and celebrities to tell us what we’re supposed to know about political things instead of reading about it or listening to true experts on the matter.
“Of course, I’m very vocal about things so I do think it’s important as a ‘person with a voice’ or whatever to show people what you stand for, but to be the only arrow for people to show them what they mean – that’s dangerous, as hell!”
AURORA is set to head out on a UK and European tour, which includes a huge show at London’s Wembley Arena. Visit here for tickets and more information.
AURORA’s 2025 UK and European tour dates are:
APRIL
28 – Stockholm, Fryhuset
29 – Copenhagen, KB Hallen
MAY
1 – Amsterdam, Ziggo Dome
3 – London, OVO Arena, Wembley
5 – Paris, Le Zenith
7 – Madrid, Movistar Arena
9 – Lisbon, Sagres Campo
She will also be performing at Wilderness Festival at Cornbury Park in Oxfordshire later this summer.
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