Shirelles – Will You Love Me Tomorrow

Great song that was highly influential at the time and now. I always thought this song was a pop masterpiece. Not a teen pop opera but more like a pop novella. I put it in the same class as Be My Baby…without the Brian Wilson worship temple.

Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote this song. Some radio stations didn’t play it because of the suggestive lyrics. Tony Orlando, who was then a teenager, wanted to record this song. Don Kirshner told him that it would not sound right coming from a guy. As much as I never really cared for Kirshner…he was right in this case. Orlando did record an answer song called “Not Just Tomorrow But Always” using the name Bertell Dache.

Goffin and King worked for Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music. He assigned them to work on a Shirelles song. He liked it so much that he thought he would try to get into Columbia by offering it to the label head but was rejected. Kirshner said afterward it was “The best thing he ever did for me.”

Shirelles lead singer Shirley Alston initially didn’t like the song. She thought it was “too Country and Western” for the New Jersey group to sing.  Their producer Luther Dixon convinced her they could do it in their style, and asked King and Goffin if they could add strings and turn it into an uptempo song, which they did.

The Shirelles had been charting songs since 1958 but this was their first huge hit. Will You Love Me Tomorrow peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, #2 in Canada, #3 in New Zealand, and #4 in the UK in 1960. The Shirelles were the first black female group to have a #1.

Will You Love Me Tomorrow

Tonight you’re mine, completely
You give your love so sweetly
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes
But will you love me tomorrow

Is this a lasting treasure
Or just a moment’s pleasure
Can I believe the magic in your sighs
Will you still love me tomorrow

Tonight with words unspoken
You say that I’m the only one
But will my heart be broken
When the night meets the morning sun

I’d like to know that your love
Is a love I can be sure of
So tell me now and I won’t ask again
Will you still love me tomorrow

So tell me now and I won’t ask again
Will you still love me tomorrow
Will you still love me tomorrow
Will you still love me tomorrow

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

44 thoughts on “Shirelles – Will You Love Me Tomorrow”

  1. If Ed Sullivan couldn’t handle “Let’s Spend the Night Together”, what did he think of this song?

    The Satintones released an answer to this, “Tomorrow and Always” on Motown. It was withdrawn due to copyright infringement and later credited to Goffin and King, as it is a note-for-note remake with altered lyrics (though the first two lines are identical).

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    1. That is true about Sullivan…I guess this song was more subtle but not really.
      I just listened to it…yea it was no way they could get by with that…that is dead on the same melody.

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  2. ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ became the first #1 hit by a black female group. Goffin’s lyrics deftly touch on the doubt that lurks behind all new romances and this is a benignly sexual song with the singer wondering what will happen the day after an encounter with her man, praying that the heat of the moment won’t leave her embarrassed in the morning. She is nervous and insecure, and she feels vulnerable, which are normal reactions to being with someone for the first time, especially for a girl that has decided that she will make love not because she is caught up in a moonlit evening. The woman is amenable to having sex and she seems to know what she is doing, but she could also be a young girl on the brink of surrendering her virginity. This song was an anthem of female adolescence, a manifesto to women’s liberation that gave a voice to the challenges of being a girl who longed for both love and sex at a time when only bad girls would admit such a thing.

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  3. funny, I too somehow seem to link it and ‘Be My Baby’ in my head. A fine ’60s single, Kirshner sure got it right having them do it and not Tony Orlando despite their respective opinions on the song. King & Goffin – what a writing team!

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    1. Yea Tony Orlando just wouldn’t be the same! I do like Be My Baby a little more because of Ronnie Spector’s voice but I do really like this one… Yea they were one of the best teams out there. Lennon McCartney thought a lot of their songs.

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  7. Another one from the Girl Greats early/mid 60s. I think it works best with it being up-tempo on hearing the slowed down Gibb/P.P. Arnold version, good though it is. I think with the lyrics racing past the censors didn’t expect it to be about late night back seat shenanigans.

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    1. I never thought about the meaning of this song until I wrote this. I guess becasue it was just there…like the furniture… so I never thought about the meaning…but now I’m surprised it got by.
      It’s subtle but it’s not at the same time.

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      1. It is SOOOO linked to those early 60s ‘pre-Pill go-to-Confession-if-you-go-all-the-way guilt-ridden loss-of-reputation-days-and-nights-of-wrestling-with-your-randy-boyfriend-and-your conscience.’
        No, not the name American name Randy, the Brit kind of randiness.

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  8. I’ve always loved this song, both this version by The Shirelles and Carole King’s recording for “Tapestry,” which perhaps is the ultimate ’70s singer-songwriter album. It’s also incredible how many great songs Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote before she launched her solo career!

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  9. The main singer is gorgeous but that beehive on her head has got to go lmao. I’ve loved this song since forever. I’m sure I’ve heard a slower version, which I think it really needs. It’s a torch song, and torch songs need to be a slow burn. So funny about Tony Orlando and how they wouldn’t let him do a cover. Got to keep up the tough guy image for men 😦

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      1. I LOVE that…if I could have…that would have been my hair when I was younger. My hair was like Dylan’s around 1965…everywhere.

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      2. That’s really cool, Max. Do you have any pics of yourself from those days? Back then guys had those long hair hairstyles. Two of my brothers had big hair, but the other brothers had straight hair. My little sister had blonde ringlets, a lot like my little granddaughter. I had really long hair that was straight because it was so long. When it is shorter it waves right up.

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      3. I’ll look and see if I have any from 1985-1987…that is when I just would wake up and go…no combing…because it was so thick…it was just like Dylans.
        A lot of perms for guys in the back also…

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      5. I’m a messy guy. I can’t stand being too “neat”…it doesn’t suit me. I always liked being a little messy looking…not slob but messy.

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    2. Yea…back then imagine if a guy would have covered this song…I wonder if it would have flown?
      She does look great….I never liked those bee hives. Now Ronnie Spector with the Ronnettes…I’m still in love with her. She dated Keith Richards and John Lennon. Her sister (Estelle) dated George Harrsion

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  10. It’s a great song, definitely up there with Be My Baby! Also, lyrically pretty out there for 1960, as I don’t think she’s just singing about a peck on the cheek… When Tony Orlando was told not to record it, they were right. There wouldn’t have been the same stigma for guys…

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    1. Yea it is up there. I can’t believe it was released without more static. I never thought about it before until I wrote this…I started to think…wow how did they get by with this?

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