It's My Party

Gore was 16 when she recorded this song, which led the media to call her "The Teen Queen." She took some voice lessons in New York City and recorded some piano demos with her instructor, which somehow got to Quincy Jones - at the time an up-and-coming producer. Jones liked what he heard and decided to record her. In late February 1963, he brought a stack of demo tapes to her house and they spent an afternoon listening to one after another. The only one they both liked was "It's My Party," so they decided to record it. Jones booked a standard 3-hour session at Bell Studios in New York City, and had Paul Anka write two more songs for Gore to record. They completed all three at the session on March 30, and Gore went back to ordinary teenage life. Just six days later, "Party" was released as Gore's first single, and she heard it on the radio for the first time. On June 1 the song went to #1, making her teenage life far less ordinary.

In the tale of this song, the lead character's birthday party does not turn out to be the happy occasion she thought it would be. In the middle of the party, her boyfriend Johnny departs with a girl named Judy. Since it's her party, she feels she has every right to cry.

Gore almost missed out on her party, as after she recorded the song with Quincy Jones, Jones went to an event at Carnegie Hall where he ran into Phil Spector, who told him about a great song he was planning to record with his group The Crystals: "It's My Party." Jones didn't mention that he had recorded the song that day, but the following Monday, he picked up the tape from the recording studio and had 100 copies pressed, which he sent to the top 100 radio stations in America. The song was rush-released and quickly climbed the charts. The Crystals never did record the song.