Will You Love Me Tomorrow (1960): The First Girl Group No. 1

The Story Behind the Song · The Shirelles, 1960

The Shirelles on the cover of Cash Box, April 15, 1961

The Shirelles on the cover of Cash Box, April 15, 1961 · Scepter Records advertisement, published without copyright notice, public domain

Four girls from Passaic, New Jersey, who had started singing together at school, made the record that broke the ceiling. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" was the first song by a girl group to reach No. 1 in America — the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame puts it in exactly those words on the Shirelles' induction page.

It was written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, a married couple working in the New York songwriting factory around 1650 Broadway. King was eighteen. She wrote the melody and the string arrangement; Goffin wrote the words. You will often read that she was seventeen — going by her birth date in February 1942, she was eighteen when the song was written and recorded, and turned nineteen a few days after it topped the chart.

The record came out on Scepter 1211 and reached No. 1 in the last week of January 1961. Billboard's own pages for that week are missing from the archives, but Cash Box's Top 100 for the issue dated February 4, 1961 shows it plainly at the top, with the previous week's position also No. 1 — the Shirelles, Scepter, one of the few weeks in that era when the biggest record in the country was made by teenage girls.

What made it land was the question in the title. Pop songs of the period were not in the habit of admitting that a girl might have something at stake, or that she might be weighing a decision rather than waiting to be chosen. Shirley Owens sang it as a question and left it as a question, and the record does not answer it.

On the record

  • Released on Scepter 1211; written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King.
  • No. 1 on the Cash Box Top 100, issue dated February 4, 1961, having also been No. 1 the previous week.
  • Billboard lists it at No. 1 on the Hot 100 dated January 30, 1961; that week's Billboard is missing from the public scan archive, so we cite Cash Box.
  • The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame calls it "the first girl group song to hit Number One."
  • Carole King, born February 1942, was eighteen — not seventeen, as is often written.

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Sources: Cash Box, February 4, 1961 — Top 100 (issue scan) · Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: The Shirelles · Billboard Music Week, April 17, 1961 — Hot 100, Shirelles follow-ups (issue scan). Chart positions are cited to the specific Billboard chart and issue date, because the magazine ran several separate charts in these years and a record could sit at No. 1 on one and No. 8 on another.

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