RUN FOR YOUR LIVES 2025 Tour Thread *SPOILERS INSIDE*

The Dissident said:
Okay I'm missing something here, can someone explain what an "Also ran" song is? I'm sure I missed what it means in catching up in the thread.
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It comes from horse racing, bookies pay out money if your horse wins the race or if you have an each way bet if it finishes in the first 3. The other horses in the race that didn't come in the first three places are referred to in the results as "also ran", i.e. they also ran in the race.

Therefore in this context, it means that someone is considering the Trooper as not being one of the top Maiden songs.
 
LooseCannon said:
The Trooper never got a lot of radio play, but it has been well integrated via popular media. A casual example that always comes to mind is the song ending up in the book World War Z. So while I would think that in, say, 1985, The Trooper wasn't as well known as Run to the Hills, by 2025 I would think it absolutely is.
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It's definitely more known now I think than any Maiden song.
 
BludBrutha said:
Ok, TIL that The Trooper is as famous as Run to the Hills and The Number of the Beast I guess. I hear both of those on the radio every second day, I don’t think I’ve ever heard The Trooper on the radio once in my life.
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I know that Finland is extremely small market when the airplay is concerned, but The Trooper has received continuous airplay as long as I remember. Of course it might be a tad bit less than The Number of the Beast, for example, but it's still out there very significantly.

The Infamous single artwork is also one of the most widely known and along with Run to the Hills, it's probably what most people associate Maiden (gallop) sound with.

That being said, I do get your point about the mentioned TNOTB singles potentially being a tad bit bigger, but I'd argue it really depends on the market. As others have said, all three (The Trooper, 666, Hills) are pretty much up there and Fear of the Dark, Wasted Years, Aces High, 2 Minutes to Midnight (still on a regular airplay) and even Can I Play With Madness and The Evil That Men Do aren't that far behind.
 
Yeah, that may be true for Finland, but outside of Finland I'd say it's pretty rare. The only Iron Maiden song I've ever heard on the radio is Run to the Hills. I did hear Hallowed on Sirius once, but that doesn't really count.

Where The Trooper comes in is via pop culture inserts. It's got one of the most popular posters, so anytime someone needs to show "heavy metal from the 80s" in show or movie a Trooper poster pops up. The shirt remains one of the most popular as well, so it ends up on celebs, in photos, etc. And the inclusion of it in popular media is surely keyed to Maiden fans working in media who go "well this is way better than Run to the Hills", which is a correct take.
 
srfc said:
It's definitely more known now I think than any Maiden song.
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Which is my point. Historically it was no where near as big as Beast or Hills but now it is. Now it’s a massive song, due in part to the beer, the flag waving during the show etc.

It’s also way more popular now than songs like Madness and Daughter that were bigger on release than Trooper was - but they’ve gone down in popularity while Trooper has only gone up.

Sorry some of you guys got triggered by that for some reason.

Now back to the scheduled discussion of what guitar Adrian uses for what song and how great Aces High sounded to the guy who was at the show and how bad it sounded to everyone who wasn’t.
 
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Trooper must have got reasonable airtime in the UK in the 80s because I heard it as a kid listening to very mainstream radio. I remember it more vividly than other Maiden songs
 
BludBrutha said:
Which is my point. Historically it was no where near as big as Beast or Hills but now it is. Now it’s a massive song, due in part to the beer, the flag waving during the show etc.

It’s also way more popular now than songs like Madness and Daughter that were bigger on release than Trooper was - but they’ve gone down in popularity while Trooper has only gone up.

Sorry some of you guys got triggered by that for some reason.

Now back to the scheduled discussion of what guitar Adrian uses for what song and how great Aces High sounded to the guy who was at the show and how bad it sounded to everyone who wasn’t.
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Not triggered, just disagreeing. Trooper Ale came out in 2013. The song was huge before then. If it wasn't they would have named the beer something else for their first one I would think.
 
Trooper has been legendary for ages, regardless of radio play. I've heard it in the radio in Germany, but that's besides the point.
Other metal bands have covered the song or referenced the intro riff (Iced Earth did that on their Alive in Athens live album in 1999). The twin lead melody is also well known in metal circles, even with folks who aren't Maiden fans.

If we wanna talk mainstream only, then we don't have to go further than the iconic single artwork, which might be one of the most popular Maiden designs for shirts. Even people who have nothing at all to do with metal have been seen wearing such shirts. Now, whether RTTH or The Trooper was better known among non-metalheads is difficult to tell, but I'd argue by the 90s and early 2000s, prior to the beer, both of those songs were at the very least on equal footing.
 
Mosh said:
This is an insane take.
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Not really. The Trooper was dropped from the setlist in the 80s (the majority of the Somewhere in Time tour, the final leg of the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son tour) and that never happened with The Number of the Beast or Run to the Hills, which were live staples then.

Undoubtedly, The Trooper became one of their iconic songs later on and is probably now on par with those two and Fear of the Dark in terms of popularity.
 
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This came up a few months back:

srfc

Thread 'When did The Trooper become Maiden's de facto big hit?'

The Trooper was always a top 10 Maiden song, but never the very top, just compare how many times it's been dropped to Hallowed, TNOTB or Fear of the Dark.

But it's now the "go to" Maiden song. When and why did this happen?

I do think Trooper Beer had some influence on The Trooper's popularity, but I agree that it was probably named after The Trooper because The Trooper was already so popular. They likely both helped boost each other, the beer was named after a popular song to boost it's popularity, the song got a boost in popularity from people discovering the beer and finding out what it was named after. Also remember that Trooper Beer was launched during the massively successful Maiden England tour, which also featured The Trooper quite prominently in the artwork.

I also looked into the Google search history of "the trooper iron maiden" and found some interesting peaks:

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Edington said:
Google Trends shows a peak in searches for "the trooper iron maiden" in August 2005, which correlates with the Ozzfest incident on August 20th. There's a small spike in the summer of 2006 (which could be due to the releases of AMOLAD and Guitar Hero II), then a slump throughout late 2006, possibly because they weren't playing it on the first leg of the AMOLAD tour?

A couple more spikes in 2008 - 2009 correlate with the Somewhere Back in Time tour/compilation album release, then another one in May 2010, though The Final Frontier was announced in early June. There's a bit of a drop off throughout late 2010 - early 2011, then another small spike in mid-2011 after it returned to the set of the Final Frontier Tour.

It's interesting that there's a slump throughout 2012 and early 2013, despite the Maiden England Tour having started. It picks up again when the tour resumes in the summer of 2013 and after the beer was launched, then interest starts to peter out. Something happened in October 2019 that caused a small spike, then Piece of Mind was shown in Stranger Things in July 2022, causing another spike.
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srfc said:
That sounds live there, the guitars are still feeding back when the bass for Wrathchild starts and there's no noticeable difference in tone between the Ides of March and Wrathchild as you would expect between a tape and the live band.
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I don't know, that's what I remember @Luisma saying.
Or, I might have misunderstood him and they started using the tape later.
 
Magnus said:
I don't know, that's what I remember @Luisma saying.
Or, I might have misunderstood him and they started using the tape later.
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That sounds prerecorded to me, if I had to guess. There is a clear difference in stereo image, there is more bottom energy in Ides overall, the cymbals sound clearly different, the snare is more prominent etcetera. The point about the guitar feeding back is a significant counter-argument, though I suppose the live guitar could have started to play along a bit.
 
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GhostofCain said:
Not really. The Trooper was dropped from the setlist in the 80s (the majority of the Somewhere in Time tour, the final leg of the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son tour) and that never happened with The Number of the Beast or Run to the Hills, which were live staples then.
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True that, and I suppose there was a reason Hills was used as an encore song in the 80's (probably because the chorus has words), but Trooper's melody and single cover are some of the most iconic in metal. During the 90's they become equal, I guess.

Speaking of the song, I'm not enjoying the song's studio tempo live now, and Simon is playing the verses without the prominent gallop. Sorry. Is the studio version like that?

edit: also his drumming on Wasted, Hallowed, Powerslave and even 2 Minutes, I prefer Nicko's versions, without a doubt.
 
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Kalata said:
True that, and I suppose there was a reason Hills was used as an encore song in the 80's (probably because the chorus has words), but Trooper's melody and single cover are some of the most iconic in metal. During the 90's they become equal, I guess.

Speaking of the song, I'm not enjoying the song's studio tempo live now, and Simon is playing the verses without the gallop(?). Sorry.
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Trooper?
 
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