Will You Love Me Tomorrow

"Will You Love Me Tomorrow" was written by the husband-and-wife songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. It's a benignly sexual song with the singer wondering what will happen the day after an encounter with her man. It met with some resistance from radio stations, but not enough to stop it from becoming a huge hit, selling over a million copies.

This was the first hit written by Goffin and King, who became one of the top writing teams in music history. They were signed to Don Kirshner's Aldon music, which along with the Brill building, was the center of the songwriting universe in the early '60s. Kirshner assigned them to write a song for the Shirelles as a follow-up to "Tonight's The Night," which reached #39 in October 1960, the biggest hit for the group to that point. King came up with the music, and Goffin, excited about writing for The Shirelles, quickly came up with the lyrics. Kirshner loved the song, and recognizing that he had something new and different, decided to use it to get in the door at Columbia Records, so he offered it to Columbia for Johnny Mathis, but their label head Mitch Miller politely declined, which Kirshner later said was "the best thing he ever did for me." Back at Aldon Music, Tony Orlando wanted to record the song, but Kirshner, taking a cue from what he learned when he offered it to Mathis, explained that it was a girl's lyric, and that no teenage boy would say these words. So finally, the song went to The Shirelles, where it was intended all along. It went to #1 in January 1961. Tony Orlando ended up recording an answer song called "Not Just Tomorrow But Always" using the name Bertell Dache.

Don't let anyone tell you that this was the first US #1 hit by an all-female group - The McGuire Sisters hit the top spot three times in the '50s. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" was, however, the first #1 by a black female group, and the first #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, which debuted in 1958. From 1955-1958, Billboard had a chart called the Top 100 with different criteria.