Marshall Crenshaw’s eponymous debut LP arrived in 1982, a time when New Wave was petering out, but its spare, fresh updating of Buddy Holly’s rockabilly sound won him critical attention. “Someday, Someway,” the first single from the album, only reached No. 62 on the Hot 100, but the LP was full of catchy tunes that made Crenshaw sound like the a star in the making.
He had the backstory to match. Detroit native Crenshaw got his start playing John Lennon in a touring company of Beatlemania, the cover band/show built around the tunes of the Fab Four (yes, kids, such was the popularity of the Beatles that people would fork over folding money to watch four guys imitate them).
Unfortunately for Crenshaw, his music could be, and was, classified as power pop. “Some of the stuff I’ve done you could call power pop,” Crenshaw allowed, “but the term does have sort of a dodgy connotation.” By “dodgy connotation” he meant “kiss of death.” As Tommy Keene explained years later, the power pop designation got you “compared to a lot of bands that didn’t sell records. It’s like a disease. If you’re labeled that, you’re history.”
And that’s pretty much what happened to Crenshaw. Two more singles made the Bubbling Under chart, but couldn’t crack the Hot 100. He released five more LPs over the next decade without ascending beyond a cult following, though he did land a significant acting gig – playing Buddy Holly, naturally – in “La Bamba,” the Richie Valens biopic.
Crenshaw has had more success as a songwriter – he wrote the title tune for the John C. Reilly-starring “Walk Hard” – and still plays a few dozen gigs a year. But he’s never matched the promise of that first album.
Crenshaw’s version of “Someday, Someway” was actually the second one to reach the lower reaches of the Hot 100. Rockabilly singer Robert Gordon took the tune to No. 76 in 1981.
