I discovered the largely forgotten Del Shannon through Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!, Bob Stanley’s excellent book on the history of pop music. The late Michigan singer-songwriter sounded as if the Crystals decided to make country music – listen to that high pitched “Why why why why wonder?” here in Runaway. And in case you were wondering: that bridge in the middle of the song is a ‘musitron’, a kind of analog synthesizer which appears to have only ever been used on a few of Del Shannon’s songs. So maybe we shouldn’t have forgotten Del Shannon.