Runaway

April–May 1961

A clever little song, this. I heard this a million times on the oldies stations growing up, but I always just knew it as the song where he goes "wah-wah-wah-wah." Spending four weeks at the top, it was a fairly big smash hit.

The most recognizable hook of the song is obviously the falsetto bit in the chorus – this couldn't have been a hit without it. However, as often happens to those who record such hits, Shannon was forever doomed to be that guy who does the falsetto thing. After "Runaway"'s, er, runaway success, he was undeniably goaded into attempting similar hits by his producers. You can't quite call him a one-hit wonder, because he actually had two more top-ten hits in the next few years: "Hats Off to Larry," which is a lame rewrite of "Runaway;" as well as the surprisingly good "Keep Searchin' (We'll Follow the Sun)."

And like so many other of the artists on our list, he has long since faded into obscurity, due to his inability to create more than basically one interesting thing. Oddly, he broke into the Top 40 one last time in 1981 with a terrible cover of "Sea of Love," and after that the world forgot about him. He died less than ten years later at age 55. So it goes.

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