0:00- 0:16 – Joji wakes up on a limousine confused, starting to stumble around
0:16-0:28- He starts walking through the limousine stumbling, people are drinking and talking to each other, ignoring the fact that he exists.
0:30 – He is laying on the dry cracked ground, and as he is singing about his past relationship his skin begins to crack like the ground.
0:40-0:55- Joji starts to pick up his pace and is realizing that the limousine seems endless, he continues to pass people that seem to be enjoying their time.
1:05- The people on the limousine start to acknowledge his presence but are grabbing at him and laughing at him. As he is running through this endless limo he sings “I know that I’m stuck in this misery”
1:15 – Frame back to him on the dirt, his skin forming more and more cracks as he chooses to “run”
1:30 – As he runs through the people repeat themselves, it’s like he is running through a never-ending loop. The people on the limousine now start to grab at him and pull him back, trying not to let him continue through the limo but Joji is able to escape their grips and continues on.
1:45-1:54 – The aspect on the limo now seem to get more complex, rather than the same scene a hot tub now appears in the aisle and once he climbs through it he passes shrubbery that looks forest like inside the limo with things grabbing onto him
2:05-2:20- The little limo hallway begins to spin challenging his run through it even further, it then stops and he is now running without any barriers, there is no one else on the limo just him running and running
2:20- Another cut of him on the ground, his skin now very cracked
2:29-2:40- It seems that Joji has approached the end of this limo as we see a very bright light, he begins to stumble towards it while we see flashbacks of his journey through this limo between cuts of him getting closer and closer to the white light
2:42 Joji is suddenly in a room with the passengers of the limo circling him like large looming god figures.
2:49-2:55- Joji begins to hit at the white bright light and it begins to break like a tv screen would, but he is hitting it and hitting it trying to shatter it.
2:57 – Cut to Joji now running on a barren looking planet which is what he was previously laying on when his skin was cracking.
3:14- Joji finally breaks through this screen, it shatters like glass, the song itself ending.
3:21-3:26 – Joji is seen running through this barren area, and slowly you hear an overhead voice telling him to wake up
3:27- Joji wakes up in a spacecraft setting, with the wake-up voice still heard in the background
3:53 – He walks around the spacecraft and grabs what looks like an itinerary sheet and the wake-up voice is still present along with some sort of machine noise.
4:05 – The voice is now repeating please hold as he looks at the image of a car on what looks like the place where he was running outside.
4:23-4:35 – The voice continues to repeat wake up as the camera pans out on Joji standing in the middle of the spacecraft, and the video ends.
In order to fully understand the song and the video, one has to take a look at Joji’s past. He started off his career in the entertainment industry as a YouTuber known by FilthyFrankTV, and as he garnered popularity, began to make music side projects that differed to his content. Eventually, when he had a sizable audience he wanted to pursue his true passion, music, leaving one industry that he began to feel burnt out it and entering a new one full of its own complexes. Run is a music video that could be placed into a multiverse, carrying aspects and “Easter eggs” to previous videos which is a concept he had in his YouTube videos. The song itself is about a relationship that he cannot forget and how he still has feelings for his ex but knows she doesn’t feel the same. I feel like the whole never-ending limo concept is him trying to show how he is trying to run from his feelings and thoughts but can never escape them. I think that the people in the limo have more to do with his career rather than the woman who the song is about. As a fan of his from the YouTube days, I know that many of his YouTube fans feel like they were abandoned by him and constantly criticize his emergence into the music industry, so I feel like those people in the limo trying to pull him backward signify that. He is running from multiple problems but can’t seem to get too far, until he reaches the screen that he begins to break, maybe like breaking through the constraints of his thoughts. When he wakes up in the shuttle ( which is from a previous music video ) it’s like he woke up from a bad dream, but now he is all alone. With the voice in the background constantly telling him to wake up and the machinery noise, it’s like he is in a coma in a hospital with someone telling him to wake up but Joji doesn’t seem to realize that. Overall I think this song and music video is trying to show him fighting and escaping all of his struggles trying to find peace with himself, but having to go through multiple stages of acknowledging everything that he feels.
