Songfacts®:

• This R&B classic was written by the songwriting team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. It was one of the few Drifters tracks where Ben E. King sang lead - he left the group later in 1960.
• Jay & the Americans hit #6 in the US with their 1969 recording of the song. Kenny Vance, who was a member of the group, has continued to perform the song and included it on the soundtrack to the 2000 movie Looking For An Echo, where he was the music supervisor. Vance talks about the song: "It's a fantastic sentiment: This magic moment, while your lips are close to mine, will last forever, forever 'til the end of time. Songs like that, they just don't seem to exist anymore. It says something about who people were in those days. It says something about who the writers were, what kind of people they were, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, who also wrote "Save the Last Dance for Me." And it also says something about what people were interested in. There's a whole world of people that are still interested in that, but most of this music has been taken off of the radio, and there's a whole other thing on the radio that doesn't have this purity or sentimentality or honesty. It's a great song that transcends time for me." (Read more in our interview with Kenny Vance.)