Run

A slow-burn soulful song about running away from enslavement is not necessarily what we expect to hear in 2023. But if you’re Madison McFerrin, the daughter of jazz great (and “Don’t Worry Be Happy”), it won’t come as that much of a surprise. The younger McFerrin actually gets her father to accompany her for what is perhaps the most compelling story of a song in our Top 100. The artist had connected to a distant cousin over an ancestry website and discovered that her great-great-great-grandmother was a runaway slave. Her story became the catalyst for the exception “Run” – a way for the artist to connect to her past and to encourage her ancestors that yes running will be worth it, and that she is living proof of that.