Songfacts®:

• Written by the Tin Pan Alley songwriters Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby and Ted Snyder, this song was originally recorded by Isham Jones & his Orchestra in 1923. It was revived by Harry James in 1946 and was then sung by Gloria De Haven in the 1950 movie Three Little Words. Johnnie Ray's version was a hit in 1956.
  
  In the song, the singer now has the upper hand following a breakup, likely a divorce ("Whose heart is achin' for breakin' each vow?), and is rubbing it in. It's not gender specific, so it can be sung by either a man or a woman.
• Connie Francis didn't want to record this song, but it was one of her father's favorites and he convinced her to do it. After a false start, she sang it in one take. When Dick Clark started to play Francis' version on American Bandstand, it became a million seller.
• Francis had recently accepted a premed scholarship at New York University and she was contemplating ending her career as a singer, but this song made her a star and was the first of many transatlantic hits for the Italian American.
• In Rich Podolsky's book Don Kirshner: The Man with the Golden Ear, in an interview with Francis, we learn how she and Bobby Darin met for the first time in Brill Building executive George Scheck's office. Darin and Kirshner were going door to door in the building trying to get someone to listen to their songs; Scheck had arranged a meeting with them and Francis. This was 1956 - two years before this song hit - when she was still relatively unknown. Darin would later write songs for Francis.
  
  Connie Francis also confides in the same volume that she and Darin were quite smitten with each other at first sight, but were both so feisty that they traded barbs a few times before settling down to date.
• Marie Osmond brought this song back to the charts in 1975, when her cover reached #40 in the US.
• Francis told DISCoveries Magazine about the recording session: "We threw ['Who's Sorry Now'] in at the end of the session knowing that there was no way I was going to do four songs on that date. But there was 16 minutes left. So over the intercom I said, 'That's it, fellas, thanks a lot, we haven't got time.' My father said 'wait a second, you got 16 minutes left, cut the damn song.' So it was like pulling teeth. I looked at the arranger and said, 'okay, let's go through this turkey. My father likes this song.' He said 'alright, let's do it.' So we did it. And I did half a take, and the tempo was wrong. I did one other take and that was it. That's all there was time to do. That's how the record came out."
• Francis explained that before this song, she would try to imitate other singers because she often recorded demos geared towards other artists like Patti Page or Kay Starr. "I didn't have a style of my own yet. On 'Who's Sorry Now,' it was the first time I didn't even care who I sounded like, I just sang it like me."
• In 1958, Elvis Presley did a home recording of this song, along with a bit from Francis's "I'm Sorry I Made You Cry," with his then-girlfriend Anita Wood at a friend's house in Waco, Texas.