CLUNK Recommends | Champ - Taste To Run

Meg Ivy Brunning

Music journalist and photographer based in Cardiff (for now). Just trying to write about music that moves me in someway. If you do wish to find me though, I’ll usually be tucked away listening to music, talking to an animal on the street like a modern day Snow White or at a gig somewhere!

Champ’s debut single ‘Taste To Run’ is Hartlepool’s answer to musical loveliness and is an anthem for dreamers (and me)

I first heard Champ’s newest single today in my favourite coffee shop and, honestly, the timing was perfect. The sun was streaming in, it was warm outside and this track from Hartlepool’s exciting newcomers felt like it was bottled sunshine. ‘Taste To Run’ reminded me of the sweeping, anthemic sounds of Sam Fender and The War On Drugs – this isn’t just a single, it’s the start of something brilliant.

‘Taste To Run‘ shines and shimmers, the drums crash, the guitars sweep through your brain, and you’re left feeling truly fuelled. It instantly sent me spinning back to being 16, a time when everything just felt simple and I was utterly unstoppable.

Champ frontman Jonny Bee revealed, ‘Taste To Run’ is all about “that burning desire for wanting something beyond the hand you’ve been dealt, and realising there’s no time like the present to go and get it.” That sentiment is something I have been searching for since I moved to London from my small town when I was 18, “spending all my luck and all my time” (first lyric in the song) on whatever dream had been consuming me back then.

The song builds to an exhilarating climax, with the final crash of the drums and the repeated chant of “you’ve got a taste to run, you’ve got a taste of something more” feels incredibly hopeful – like a whispered promise that yes, maybe we can have a taste of something more, chase our wildest dreams and truly go for it; leave our inhibitions behind, believe in ourselves and something will happen. Right?

Champ arrives with a sound that is deeply personal to their experiences and universally resonant. ‘Taste To Run‘ is more than just a debut single; it’s an invitation to rediscover that rush of possibility within your own life.