Songfacts®:

• Information Society went through a bewildering series of lineup changes in their early years. The constant was Paul Robb, who founded the group in 1982. They grew a small fanbase in the Minneapolis area, but struggled to break through, which led to much of the band member turmoil.
  
  "Running" was released as a single in 1984 and became popular in the New York club scene in 1985. In 1986, Tommy Boy Records released a remix of the song that earned the group an album deal. By this time, several members had come and gone, often leaving the band in the lurch. When Paul Robb started working on the album, he recalled these trying times and those who "walked away." In our interview with Robb, he explained: "'Walking Away' was a song where I sat down and said, 'I want to write a song that's kind of like 'What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy),' but it's going to be directed to some former members of our band who had sort of quit the band at an importune moment. As a matter of fact, they both quit right before we made it big with 'Running.' So if you listen to the lyrics of 'Walking Away,' it's basically just someone complaining about people who left. That's because that's exactly what it is."
• The group hit it big with their first Tommy Boy single, "What's on Your Mind (Pure Energy)," which made #3 in the US. That remains by far their best-known song, but "Walking Away," released as the follow-up single, also did very well, charting at #9.
• This song starts with a sample of William Shatner saying "It is useless to resist us." This sample comes from the 1967 Star Trek episode "Mirror Mirror," where Shatner's character Captain Kirk says it to the Halkans.
  
  Three Information Society songs from the album use Star Trek samples, most famously Spock's "Pure Energy" on "What's On Your Mind." The song "Over the Sea" incorporates the line, "In every revolution, there's one man with a vision," which also comes from Shatner in the "Mirror Mirror" episode.