The lyrics are sung from the point of view of a man whose former girlfriend, named Sue, was extremely unfaithful. He warns all potential lovers to avoid her at all costs, as Sue "runs around" with every guy she meets and never settles down with any man in particular. He advises "Now people let me put you wise, Sue goes out with other guys" and suggests that potential suitors should 'keep away from Runaround Sue'. Dion stated in his autobiography "The Wanderer" that although his wife's name was Susan, Runaround Sue had nothing to do with her. However, during a 1990 interview with his wife on the Oprah Winfrey Show, they presented the story that the song was indeed about her. According to Dion in an interview: "It’s all according to what day you get me on [laughs]. I like to have fun with people. Actually, it’s kind of a mixture. My wife would love to think it’s about her, because she thinks it would be great for her image. It really is about a girl who was kind of loose in the neighborhood. The word Sue just fit for the song - you couldn’t use Roberta, or Alice, or whatever. I’m not going to mention who it’s really about, but between you and I, the girl called in to an interview show I was on about 20 years ago. She had married a rabbi, had six kids and sounded wonderful! And I thought how good it was to hear from her, you know. Chalk it up to being young and foolish, a lot of young people are, but she turned out wonderful. But thank you for the song [laughs]." But in another interview he said: "I wanted the song to be about a girl we knew from the neighborhood who had broken every guy’s heart. Not Ellen or anyone else at the party. The girl had dated everyone—that sort of thing. What can I tell you, we were kids. But even though the girl had inspired the song, Ernie and I didn’t want to use her real name. Instead, there was this girl named Sue we had admired from a distance at the Harwyn Club in Manhattan. Her name fit the lyric line perfectly." Two years after this song was released, Dion married a woman named Sue. In a 2009 interview with Blueswax, Dion revealed that his wife tells people this song is about her, even though she knows it isn't. Said Dion: "She goes around telling everybody, 'Yeah, I'm Runaround Sue.' I said, 'Why do you tell people that?' She says, 'They remember me.' She said, 'If I don't tell them that, they won't remember me.'" One statement he made does seem to be undeniably true - "It’s all according to what day you get me on [laughs]." "Runaround Sue" was a US No. 1 hit for the singer Dion during 1961 after he split with the Belmonts. The song ranked No. 342 on the Rolling Stone list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".