1 March 1963
As with Frank Ifield in 1962, our new-fangled official Irish singles chart comes a bit too late for Del Shannon’s signature track, his wonderful 1961 hit ‘Runaway’. I presume ‘Runaway’ sold plenty in Ireland anyway, but so far as Irish chart history is concerned it wasted its sweetness on the desert air.
‘Little Town Flirt’ hasn’t lived as long in the collective memory as ‘Runaway’. For one thing, it doesn’t have the latter track’s compelling mix of Orbison-esque melodrama and weird electronica solo. Also, we’ve all had enough of songs where double-standard guy disses girl for shopping around like a guy would. For all that, ‘Little Town Flirt’ in 1963 terms sounds quite modern: I hear trace elements of ’60s beat pop rhythms, Brill Building arrangements, Beach Boys melody and Jagger-Lennon lead-singer sneeriness. Not that I’m claiming mere ‘Little Town Flirt’ as a newly-unearthed Rosetta Stone of ’60s music, but it reminds us that the decade’s big beasts weren’t created ex nihilo. Pop music in 1963, even modest ‘Little Town Flirt’, was already kicking on from rock n’ roll; evolution was in the air.
