Music video: Bree Runway releases the Hounds of Love for “Somebody Like You”

Every time I’m like ‘I’mma post on Bree Runway’, I forget. I need to be putting some Ginkgo Biloba in my fucking diet.

HENNYWAY.

I do like me some Bree Runway. I’ve bussed down many a time to “Damn, Daniel” and “Hot Hot”. But there was no way I was going to pass on posting on Bree’s single “Somebody Like You”, because not only is it a really fucking good song, but it’s a complete pivot from anything Bree has put out before.

Ever since seeing this TikTok of Bree singing Phil Collins’ “A Groovy Kind Of Love”, I’ve been hoping that she would release a song where she just sings. And a bitch did it. But Bree Runway didn’t just release a song where she sings. But she actually went and released a whole Phil Collins, Kate Bush / Hounds of Love sounding-ass song and looking-ass video with it.

“Somebody Like You” is a great song.

BUT.

I feel the timing of the release may work against it, which is unfortunate.

We’re now on the approach to summer, and “Somebody Like You” is Fall / Winter as fuck. It’s a start-of -the-year or end-of-the-year type of song, for when we are all depressed, it is dark outside 23.5 hours out of the day, and we’re fully over Christmas and the new year. “Somebody Like You” isn’t the type of song which is going to get major airplay on the radio right now, when the trend right is songs everybody can shake their ass to. I mean...I can will shake my ass to anything. I’m that bitch who tests their knees to Hikaru Utada’s “Hatsukoi”. 

Bree cutting through the noise and zigging when everybody else is zagging could help the “Somebody Like You” find the mass audience that she and the song deserves, but I don’t think it will. I want to be wrong through. Because this song is so damn good. And the fact that it’s a Black woman doing a song with this sound is just the cherry on top. Because people still wanna be playing games when it comes to categorising Black artists, and it wouldn’t surprise me if radio files “Somebody Like You” under R&B.

Bree also released an Orchestral Version of the song, which features a choir and some string arrangements, which also sounds great.

Bree is in that very, VERY small camp of rappers who can genuinely sing, kill it and have me wanting to hear them do it more. I adore rapper Missy. But one of my favourite Missy songs happens to be one where she’s singing. 

I absolutely adore that Bree released “Somebody Like You”. And I hope that she doesn’t let the fact that it isn’t a top 10 hit deter her from trying another song like this, or perusing it for her debut album. Because as much I like rapper Bree, I would gladly buy a whole album of her singing, if this is the tone she sets.