The page finally explains why that Stereolab was called Jenny Ondioline as well! (Thoug French Disco was the best on that EP).

It was the kind of record you could build a career on and Del Shannon didn’t disappoint. The existential angst of Runaway became a template that he was still using at the far end of the decade on the ghostlike Colorado Rain. He couldn’t write any other way - the fear and the demons in Shannon’s music echoed the mind of its maker.

It’s a shame we’ll only encounter Del just the once on Popular. As his career started to tail off in the beat boom, he rediscovered his groove with near-miss Keep Searchin’, a no.3 at the end of ‘64. “Gotta find a place to hide with my baby by my side” - the lyric was even bleaker and more oblique than Runaway, the sound newly toughened by the Brit beat influence. The cry of the fugitive, a possible abductor with his (underage?) girl who’s “been hurt so much, they treat her mean and cruel”, Keep Searchin’ ends with a desperate, beautiful, lupine howl of release. Like Runaway, it’s a stone 10.

From this point on, Shannon rarely stumbled until his semi-retirement as a performer in ‘69. Keep Searchin’ had an even more paranoiac sequel in Stranger In Town where a private detective, or maybe a hitman, gets thrown into the equation. On Break Up in ‘65 he’s so wracked and tortured that he can’t even convey his fears in words, resigning himself to losing his girl - though he seems to have zero evidence this is about to happen. The single was a flop (Stranger In Town turned out to be his last UK hit) and Del was devastated. He took boxes of the single and threw them tearfully into a Michigan river.