Lesley Gore made a strong statement for sad girls everywhere when she proclaimed, it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to. Released in 1963, “It’s My Party” was a certifiable hit produced by the legendary Quincy Jones and co-written by Seymour Gottlieb, Walter Gold, John Gluck Jr. and Herb Weiner. The song is a semi-true story based on one of the writers’ daughter’s birthday parties.
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Meaning Behind the Song
The lyrics of “It’s My Party” set the scene at a girl’s 16th birthday party where she finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her with a classmate named Judy. The situation takes a turn for the worse when the main character sees Judy and Johnny walk through the door at her party, Judy sporting a ring on her finger. It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to/Cry if I want to/Cry if I want to/You would cry too, if it happened to you, Gore croons over the big band melody.
Though the events of the real-life birthday party that inspired the song weren’t quite as brutal, tears were indeed shed by the birthday girl in question. Gottlieb and his family were throwing a 16th birthday party for his daughter Judy in their native Brooklyn, New York, in 1963 when they delivered news to Judy that she wasn’t too happy about.
“My parents insisted that my grandparents had to be invited,” Judy recalled to New York Daily News in 2015. “I of course, being a bratty teenager, said I didn’t want them there. I burst into tears, and my father said, ‘Don’t cry.'” That’s when the teen responded with what would become the world-famous phrase, “It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.”
[RELATED: Behind the Song Lyrics: Lesley Gore’s Feminist, Civil Rights Anthem “You Don’t Own Me”]
In addition to owning a restaurant in the city, Gottlieb was a songwriter on the side. He allegedly wrote the lyrics to “It’s My Party” and passed them on to his friend and songwriting partner Weiner, who was signed to Aaron Schroder’s publishing company at the time. Weiner then finished writing the song with Gold and Gluck Jr. After the demo was recorded, it wound up in Jones’ hands and was one of the hundreds of demos he played for Gore when they met in February 1963.
A month later, Gore was in a studio in Manhattan recording the track alongside 23 band members and roughly nine backup singers. The song was completed in a few takes. Weeks after it was recorded, “It’s My Party” was released as the lead single off Gore’s debut album, I’ll Cry If I Want To, in April 1963. The song shot to the top of the charts, hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts. It was also a No. 1 hit in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
“I liked it because she sang in tune, and she had a nice sound, a very identifiable sound,” Jones said in an interview with NPR about hearing a demo of Gore for the first time. “That was the first pop record I made, was Lesley Gore, ‘It’s My Party.'”
Gore passed away in February 2015 following a battle with lung cancer at the age of 68.
(Photo by Mark Sullivan/Getty Images)
