Songfacts®:

• Adams wrote this in 1983 with his songwriting partner Jim Vallance. They wrote the song for Blue Oyster Cult, whose producer Bruce Fairbairn asked them to write something for the group. Adams and Vallance messed around with the guitar intro to "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," and as Vallance explains on his website, "We transposed the riff down to E-minor, later adding a capo to achieve an F#-minor tuning, which better suited Bryan's vocal range. Once the riff was solidified, the rest of the song started to unfold. We spent a few days getting the lyrics and arrangement right, with particular attention paid to the interplay between the bass, drums and the guitar riff."
  
  Blue Oyster Cult turned down the song, as did .38 Special. Adams didn't think it was right for him either, but when producer Bob Clearmountain asked Adams if he had another song they could use on Reckless, Bryan played him the demo and they turned the song into a hit. It was the first single from the album.
• When Songfacts asked Adams which of his songs he's most proud of, he replied: "The really early ones. They were part of the learning experience to be able to write the songs that everyone knows now. You need to learn to crawl before you walk."
• The video was directed by Steve Barron, who worked on most of Adams' clips from the era. Barron directed Michael Jackson's video for "Billie Jean," and his other clients included Culture Club and Tears For Fears. In "Run To You," we see Adams in the rain, in the snow, and pulling a guitar from the leaves. We also see a girl running and some performance footage. The highlight of the video was supposed to be the tree that gets hit by lightning, which was going to trigger a scene with a lightning storm. After blowing a lot of their budget building the tree, the lightning strike looked more like a transformer explosion - it was nothing that would trigger anything more than a phone call to the electric company. Adams explained in the book I Want My MTV: "Imagine the shock and horror on set when the f--king thing burns in about a minute. We stood there, looking at this tree up in flames. And Steve Barron's going, 'Oh S--t.' That is probably my worst video."
  
  Adams might not like it, but MTV did. The video was nominated for MTV Video Music Awards in five categories, including Best Special Effects and Best Direction.
• UK production group Rage had a #3 hit in the UK in 1992 with a dance version of this tune.