The Story and Meaning Behind “Someday,” One of Steve Earle’s First Classic Tracks

Steve Earle is a legend among singer/songwriters, a guy who has been able to dip his foot in genres like rock, country, and Americana while making it all sound easy. It all to start somewhere. “Someday,” a single from his standout 1986 debut album Guitar Town, is one of his first classics.

What is the song about? On whom did Earle model the main character? And how did Earle find a winning style for that debut album? Let’s go back to the beginning of Steve Earle’s famous career and find out all about “Someday.”

Not Quite Overnight Sensation

Many people who heard the album Guitar Town when it was released in 1986 were bowled over by the singing/songwriting talent on display. Who was this guy, Steve Earle, who had seemingly come out sounding so fully formed from nowhere? Well, as it turned out, he had been hanging around the scene for quite a while.

Earle had written songs for the legendary Guy Clark, and had been a member of Clark’s band when barely out of his teenage years in the mid-‘70s. He would go on to write songs that were recorded by other country and Americana artists, some of which even turned into minor hits. There were publishing contracts and recording deals along the way as well.

At one point, Earle was positioned as a rockabilly artist in the ‘80s, recording an album that never was released. By the mid-‘80s, his list of credits had grown considerably, but he didn’t have much to show for it as an artist in his own right. But all that was about to change in a big way.

Earle found a deal with MCA Records and finally had the chance to record a debut album that would indeed get released. Seeking inspiration, he went to see a Bruce Springsteen Born in the U.S.A-era concert. Something about that experience crystallized the sound Earle wanted to create on that debut record. It was a hybrid of many genres, but it ultimately focused on songwriting authenticity above all else.

In terms of “Someday,” Earle was partly coming at it from an autobiographical standpoint. But, as he told clevescene.com, he also took inspiration from a chance encounter:

“I definitely was that guy in the song. My parents were wonderful people, but I started running away when I was 14. I was running to something and not from anything. It was inspired by something I saw just a couple of years earlier. When I had the rockabilly band, we were coming back from Tulsa [Oklahoma], I think, and were in Jackson, Tennessee, and had just pulled off and were looking for gas. Maybe something was wrong with the van. I can’t remember, but we ran into this kid. It was evening. He was in a Last of the Mohicans old-fashioned gas station, and he was working on his own car in the bay. We had to honk the horn three times to get his attention. I hung it all on that kid.”

What is the Meaning of “Someday”?

The title of “Someday” is loaded right from the start, because that word doesn’t necessarily imply that whatever is desired in the song will actually come true. When it comes to the narrator, that means all his dreams of escape and glory are still only dreams, with his location in a small town working actively against his pursuit of them.

We could quote every single line in “Someday,” because Earle doesn’t waste a word. The opening couplet sums up the stultifying atmosphere the narrator faces: There ain’t a lot that you can do in this town / You drive down to the lake and then you turn back around. Earle includes little details that show what a dead-end spot this is, such as the way the hero counts out-of-state plates while at work at the gas station, all on their way through to some place better.

And I wonder what’s over that rainbow / I’m gonna get out of here someday. We don’t know if the narrator ever did indeed fulfill that promise. But we know “Someday” arrived just in time for Steve Earle to deliver a fantastic career.

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