Ah, the joys of early ’60s pop, where it was really all about the people you didn’t see, rather than the ones who sang the song. Let’s face it, Lesley Gore is the most disposable part of the original “It’s My Party,” with vocals that do the job, but don’t really impress in any way. No, instead your ear gets drawn to the amazing arrangement (and production?) by Quincy Jones: the horns, the percussion, the piano – everything adds up to make it sound like a party – Seriously, dig the horn stabs, the way the beat is relentlessly upbeat with the Latin-inflected groove, it’s a great sound that’s at odds with the vocals (Not just Gore’s lead, but the swooning “Ooohs” in the background), but in the past way possible. It’s a contradictory wall of sound, and it’s that tension that makes this such a memorable song.
Well, that and the song itself. Putting aside for a second that it’s got such a great, simple and sing-along-able melody, the lyrics are just a perfected teenage melodrama, making “Judy’s wearing his ring” sound like the ultimate betrayal, and “I’ll cry if I want to” appear more noble, more serious, than the petty childish thing that it objectively should be (After all, “you would cry to/If it happened to you”).
It’s no surprise, then, that the song has been covered by countless people through its 49 years of existence (including permanently-aged crooner Bryan Ferry and animated horrorshow Alvin and The Chipmunks), but my absolute favorite version of the song is Amy Winehouse’s, her last official release while she was alive, from 2010:
Putting aside that it’s a great vocal performance – Messy, but just so full of personality, even with that terrible spoken word bit in the middle – again, there’s just a great arrangement there, again from Quincy Jones. That bass line! The new horn arrangement! It’s kind of amazing that, more than four decades between them, Jones can come up with two such wonderful and yet different takes on the same material.