Songfacts®:

• This song had extra meaning for Alana Haim after her best friend, Sammi Kane Kraft, died just before the band's first tour. A drunk-driving incident was to blame and the driver survived. Alana told NME that even though it was written long before that incident, the lyrics mirror her movements when she got the call:
  
  "I went back to a room
  And every memory came rushing back to soon
  As I packed my bags and I lied down
  I felt the bed sink in and the covers surround."
  
  Alana recalled: "We were in the desert in Joshua Tree and the first thing I did was to run away I remember everyone calling – 'Alana! Stop STOP! Where are you going>' The more people called, the further I'd run. I didn't wanna come back to life. Every time I listen to that song it f---ing makes me cry. I'm still dealing with the fallout."
  
  
• Alana's guitar has 'SKK' wriitten on it with black tape. They are the initials of her fallen friend.
• This song features some lap steel guitar. Danielle Haim told Q magazine it was producer Ariel Rechtshad's idea to have a lap steel player on Days Are Gone. "He suggested Greg Leisz, who is actually an old friend of mine," she said. "We used to be in the same jam circles. Ariel got him to play on 'Running If You Call My Name,' he gives the song texture and makes it sound almost like a keyboard."
• Speaking to The Guardian, Rechtshaid explained that the reason Days Are Gone took so long to come together was because the band were almost constantly on the road. "A large part of the reason that record took so long was because they never stopped touring," he said. "We didn't spend that much time in the studio. The pressure slows you down as well – people loved the singles but the record wasn't done. Songs such as 'My Song 5' and 'Running If You Call My Name' were written in the studio as we were making it."