who’s sorry now

On This Day… 27th May

/ UK #1s blog / 14 Comments

Time for another instalment of ‘On This Day’, and how the 27th May has tied in to various number one singles over the years (links to my original posts for each one).

Starting off with the record sitting atop the charts sixty-seven years ago today…

Many of the 1950s’ biggest hits were boringly straight-faced declarations of love, done in a bombastic fashion. Thank goodness for Connie Francis’s classic tale of sass and schadenfreude, then, which is one of my favourite number ones of the decade. I love the bluntness of the closing line: I’m glad that you’re sorry now… ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ isn’t a fifties original however, as it dates all the way back to 1923. What’s amazing is that 1923 to 1958 is what 1990 is to 2025… Like Sabrina Carpenter covering ‘Vogue’, or something. All of which begs a discussion as to how much popular music changed between 1923 and 1958, and how much it hasn’t changed in the past thirty-five years. A discussion for another day, perhaps. Anyway, Connie Francis is still with us, aged eighty-seven, having only retired from music in 2018.

Meanwhile on this day in 1943, ‘ar Cilla was born in Liverpool. Proud achiever of eleven top ten singles between 1964 and 1971, the first two of which gave her a brace of #1 singles, before she moved more into TV. ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ was the UK’s biggest-selling single by a female artist through the entirety of the 1960s – a fine achievement considering some of the legendary divas she was up against.

Next up, a Stones double-header. For not only was ‘Paint It, Black’ number one on this day in 1966 (meaning that the coolest comma in rock history had its moment in the sun), but on May 27th two years earlier newspapers were reporting that eleven fifth-form boys had been suspended from Woodlands Comprehensive School in Coventry for having ‘Mick Jagger haircuts’. Donald Thompson, their headmaster, decried the boys’ hair as ‘long and scruffy’, and that they could return to school only ‘with a neat Beatle cut’. We can clearly see what side of that great rock rivalry Mr Thompson was on…

Finally, on May 27th 1977, just in time for Her Majesty’s Silver Jubilee, the Sex Pistols released the number one that never was. In my Should Have Been a #1 post on ‘God Save the Queen’ I erred on the side of caution, not committing to sensationalism without proper evidence like a proper, upstanding blogger. This time, though, I’m just going to come out and say it: ‘God Save the Queen’ was the best-selling single the week of the Silver Jubilee, but was kept from the top by some very selective book-keeping. (For one week only, records bought in a shop owned by the label they were released under didn’t count towards the chart. It’s as if they knew Virgin’s Sex Pistols might sell quite a few singles in Virgin Megastores…)

It seems I’m not alone, as many sources have retrospectively awarded the Sex Pistols a number one, and the furore over it now seems incredibly quaint. How society has changed in forty-eight years… And hey, being blocked from number one by the establishment is way more punk than actually getting there. I’m sure Johnny Rotten and co. weren’t at all bothered.

71. ‘Who’s Sorry Now’, by Connie Francis

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

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Who’s Sorry Now, by Connie Francis (her 1st of two #1s)

6 weeks, from 16th May – 27th June 1958

I really didn’t mean to set it up like that at the end of the previous post, truly I didn’t. It simply occurred to me that we hadn’t had a female singer at the top of the charts for a long old time and then, lo and behold, here we are…

Not since the 19th October 1956 – just shy of seventeen months ago – have we had a feminine voice on a #1 record. Since then sixteen different male singers, or male groups, have come and gone with twenty different number one singles.

And the differences between ‘Who’s Sorry Now’, and the last female-led chart-topper – Anne Shelton’s ‘Lay Down Your Arms’ – paint a very telling picture of how the landscape of popular music has changed in recent months. Because, basically, rock ‘n’ roll has happened. Anne Shelton hit the top around the same time as ‘Que Sera Sera’ and Frankie Laine’s big-band show tune ‘A Woman in Love’. ‘Lay Down Your Arms’ was a bizarre, military marching fruit-loop of a song that harked back to World War II, Vera Lynn and all that. Since then we’ve had Elvis, and Lonnie Donegan, and Buddy and Jerry Lee. And now Connie Francis takes all that rock ‘n’ roll attitude, and gives it her own, feminine twist.

Who’s sorry now? Who’s sorry now? Whose heart is achin’ for breakin’ each vow…? Miss Francis had her heartbroken, but the man who hurt her now has his own romantic troubles… Who’s sad and blue? Who’s cryin’ too? Just like I cried, Over you… There’s a twang in her voice, a sassy hiccup, and it gives the distinct impression that she’s struggling to dredge up much sympathy for her ex.

Is this a rock ‘n’ roll ballad? The slower tempo and the backing singers suggest that it is. If so, I make it only the second one ever to top the charts – the first being The Dream Weavers’ ever-so-dreary ‘It’s Almost Tomorrow’ from two years back. (I thought about including ‘Young Love’ as a ballad; but that was just a soppy little pop song – ballads need a little bit of emosh about them).

And ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ certainly gives us emotion. It’s a song of two halves. During the first, Francis’s voice lilts and coos. For the second, she whips it up a notch or five. Right till the end! Just like a friend! I tried to warn you somehow… The drums start whippin’, cymbals crash, and her voice almost snaps… You had your way, Now you must pay… Then she delivers the final, crushing blow… I’m glad that you’re sorry now… It is a moment!

Connie_Francis_1961

This is part torch-song, part clap-back. If I were a sassy black drag-queen, I would have clicked my fingers and shouted ‘Preach’ as this track shuddered to a halt. Alas, I am not; but I love this song all the same. This is a big stepping stone in music, make no doubt about it: this is paving the way for Madonna, The Spice Girls, and any other female act with even a smidgen of attitude. This is Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ repackaged for the late fifties. A lot of the female artists we’ve met previously on this countdown have been cute, and flirty, and fun to listen to – Kitty Kallen, Kay Starr, Winifred Atwell, I’m looking at you. But no girl has brought this level of spunk to the table. Alma Cogan and Rosemary Clooney were having a great time on records like ‘Dreamboat’ and ‘Mambo Italiano’ but they were, ultimately, throwaway pop discs, with nothing like the bite of ‘Who’s Sorry Now’.

I love this song, and I love Connie Francis, and have done for a while. You can’t truly be into rock ‘n’ roll without having discovered Connie, Brenda Lee and the other female stars of the time. She was just twenty-one when this hit the top-spot, and in her pictures she sports a perfectly ‘fifties’ look: short curls an’ smokey eyes. But, on doing a little further research, I was surprised – nay, shocked! – to learn two things. One: that ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ was actually first recorded in 1923! And two: that Connie Francis was initially resistant to recording it. Luckily for all of us she did, and this version is completely different to the reedy-sounding 1923 version (which was an instrumental, for a start).

I shan’t wax too lyrical on Ms Francis just yet – we’ll be meeting her again before the year’s out, with an equally brilliant but completely different record. For now, I shall ask one more time… ‘Who’s Sorry Now? Not Connie. No sir… Preach!’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9QEAtcz3o8