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When Maurice Williams sat down as a 15-year-old in 1953, he had one simple goal: convince his girlfriend to stay a little longer before heading home for her 10 p.m. curfew. Instead, he ended up writing one of the most enduring songs in pop history.
Released by Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs in 1960, "Stay" topped the Billboard Hot 100 on Nov. 21, 1960, and, at just 98 seconds, remains the shortest song ever to reach No. 1 on the chart. More than six decades later, Billboard'sPaul Grein aptly described the record as "98 seconds of pop perfection."
The inspiration behind the song was remarkably ordinary. Williams later recalled for Wayne Jancik's book "The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders: Revised and Expanded" that his girlfriend had to leave because of her parents' rules, and despite his best efforts to persuade her otherwise, she wouldn't budge.
"She had to be in by 10 P.M.," Williams said. "One night I just didn't want her to leave. She argued that she would get into trouble. I tried to convince her she wouldn't, but she knew better and left. Like a flood, the words just came to me."
Even then, "Stay" nearly disappeared forever. Williams said he wrote the song in about 30 minutes before throwing it away. Years later, while playing demos at his girlfriend's house, her younger sister asked to hear "the song with the high voice." Williams realized she meant "Stay," and decided to record it after all.
That decision changed music history.
The original recording wastes no time, opening with The Zodiacs shouting the title before Williams launches into his heartfelt plea. Its unforgettable falsetto break from Henry Gaston became one of rock's signature vocal moments, while the song packs an entire emotional story into less than a minute and 40 seconds.
As music writer Brent Mann observed in his book "99 Red Balloons and 100 Other All-Time Great One-Hit Wonders," in which he ranks "Stay" as the No. 2 one-hit wonder of all time, the classic song possesses a "timeless quality," adding that it "glides agelessly from decade to decade."
Its influence has stretched far beyond its lone week atop the Hot 100. It has found uncommon success on the charts with several covers. The Hollies scored a Top 10 U.K. hit with their 1963 version, the Four Seasons brought it back to the American Top 20 the following year and Jackson Browne transformed it into a concert encore favorite on his acclaimed Running on Empty album in 1978, with David Lindley's soaring falsetto paying tribute to the original.
The song has also enjoyed an extraordinary second life on screen. It appeared in the 1978 film American Hot Wax, reached an entirely new generation through the blockbuster Dirty Dancing soundtrack in 1987 and has continued turning up in films and television ever since, including Shag, Jersey Boys, 11.22.63, An American Pickle and The Space Between.
Despite being remembered as a one-hit wonder, Williams left an outsized legacy. He also wrote "Little Darlin'," another rock and roll classic that became a massive hit after being covered by The Diamonds, and "Stay" has now been recorded by dozens of artists over the decades.
For a song that lasts only 98 seconds, its impact has proven almost impossible to measure. As music historian Fred Bronson put it in his "Billboard Book of Number One Hits, "'Stay' has proven to be an evergreen."
More than 65 years after first reaching No. 1, Maurice Williams' teenage plea remains every bit as irresistible as the night he first wrote it.
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