Even if you share my feeling that this song is rather too ‘house by numbers’, you ought nonetheless to spare a couple of moments to appreciate its verse vocal, although not for any sonic reason. Rather, I single it out because it’s apparently sung by Cathy Dennis, the A-list songwriter best known for her work on such pop smashes as Kylie Minogue’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, Britney Spears’s 'Toxic' and Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl’. According to these Sound On Sound magazine interviews with a couple of her erstwhile collaborators Damien Egan and Rob Davis, she apparently sings on the demos for many of the songs she shops around to major artists/labels. So if you’re also hoping to make pitches in that league I’d suggest you ask yourself how your own guide vocals stand up to those in ‘Runaway’. And then head back into the vocal booth…