‘Stay’: The 15-year-old who turned romantic rejection into a 1960 song selling eight million copies
While you might think that being a 15-year-old wouldn’t give you enough experience to write a timeless pop song about heartbreak, Maurice Williams proved in 1953 that he was more than mature enough to write what would become one of the most enduring tracks of the 1960s.
Of course, plenty of teenagers have managed to find success with songs that they wrote during their youth, with the likes of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Kate Bush all having written some of their most enduring songs before they’d come of age, but for a 15-year-old to produce something that would end up as ubiquitous as ‘Stay’ is remarkable work on Williams’ part.
Initially conceived while he was still in his adolescence, Williams supposedly came up with the entire song after a high-school date went awry, with him being unable to convince the girl he was seeing to remain out past ten at night. Evidently crushed by the fact that their soiree had to be curtailed, he ended up turning his heartbreak into inspiration, penning the lyrics to his bite-sized tune in an instant.
The song itself wouldn’t see the light of day until 1960, by which time Williams had formed his own band, The Zodiacs, but he was initially underwhelmed by the lack of interest that it received from record labels and radio stations when he submitted a demo of the track to a variety of places. Perhaps he’d placed too much faith in a song that he’d written in his juvenile years, but when he played it for a younger friend, he came back to realising that the song had potential to be a hit.
The search for a label, however, became an arduous one, and it took the band’s producer, Phil Gernhard, and his relentless efforts of delivering it to various record labels around New York, despite being located in Nashville, to even receive a whiff of interest.
The band finally found themselves getting their big break courtesy of Herald Records executive Al Silver, who recognised that there was plenty of potential in the song, but he also insisted that the band re-record the track due to its rough sound quality and to remove certain lines that related to smoking that would have otherwise prevented it from receiving any radio airtime. Williams eventually agreed to the terms, and the version of ‘Stay’ that is known today was committed to tape.
It would finally be released in August 1960 via Herald, enter the charts in October, and by the end of the year, manage to dethrone Elvis Presley from the top of the charts, not only toppling ‘The King’, but also making history as the shortest ever single to reach number one at the time, clocking in at a meagre one minute and 36 seconds.
The song would only remain at number one for a single week, but would eventually find its way across the Atlantic, becoming a top ten hit for The Hollies in 1963, and has since gone on to sell a total of over eight million copies, largely as a result of the song featuring in the soundtrack to the 1989 blockbuster Dirty Dancing.
It’s short and simple, but mightily effective, and if someone ever wants to try and argue that a 15-year-old doesn’t have a clue about love and heartbreak, then this song ought to be the rebuttal.
