The Four Season: "Big Girls Don't Cry"

November 19, 1962 (2 weeks)

So, "Sherry" had been The Four Seasons' first hit. Rather than easing people in the way The Beatles did with "Love Me Do", it was an absolute smash. Five weeks at number one in both the US and Canada and a decent-sized hit elsewhere as well. But the follow-up wasn't quite as strong so it underperformed a bit on the charts, right? Nope. "Big Girls Don't Cry" spent another five weeks at the top of the Hot 100. (Just a fortnight on the top of the CHUM charts but that's nothing to sneeze at either) No law of diminishing returns to see here.

Obviously there are factors to consider. Having had an enormous hit a couple months earlier, The Four Seasons were no longer in a position of struggling to establish themselves. Their independent label Vee-Jay operated on a shoe string budget but they were still raking in decent profits and could splurge on a sizable push for their sole big name act. (Sorry MJT + 3) And then there was the novelty of THAT voice. Frankie Valli's falsetto had startled more than enough listeners that there was still plenty of interest in hearing more of it. "The similarity no doubt contributed to its number one status," argues Fred Bronson in his classic reference The Billboard Book of Number One Hits.

If the public wanted more of the the same they got it — only this time round it wasn't nearly as good. You may find Valli's voice to be either the best or worst thing about "Big Girls Don't Cry" but one thing everyone can agree on is that it is its most distinctive feature. At one point, Valli even sounds like a girl. That scream of his could have shattered glass.

The only trouble is, there's not a great deal else to it. True, the same could be said for "Sherry" but it had a solid R&B beat to hold it together; with this, however, the music is so trivial that it might as well be an acapella number. It is said that Four Seasons member Bob Gauido and producer Bob Crewe had this and "Sherry" in the bag at the same time and had been faced with the supposedly difficult decision of having to choose one of them first. I say "supposedly" but perhaps they had every reason to think it was indeed a tough choice to make. Nevertheless, they picked the right song. It's hard to imagine "Big Girls Don't Cry" doing as well as a first attempt rather than as a timely follow-up.

Still, I don't quite dislike it as much as I seem to be suggesting. There's a sense here that they're already moving away from the doo-wop they had cut their teeth on in fifties' New Jersey and were formulating a plan to do complex harmonies all over the most innocuous of pop songs. As an overall group vocal performance it actually manages to outshine its predecessor. Clearly Valli was no longer the group's secret weapon and their days of relying on him to do the heavy lifting were already at an end. A combined ten weeks at the top of the Hot 100 in 1963 is no small achievement but the novelty was going to wear off, most likely sooner rather than later. Fortunately, The Four Seasons — including at least one of their pseudonyms — would have several exceptional singles in them in the years ahead. They just had to take a slight misstep before they could begin to move forward.

Score: 5