“The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore” by The Walker Brothers

"The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" was a hand-me-down before it was a Walker Brothers song. Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio wrote it, and Frankie Valli released it on Smash in 1965 as a solo single, even though it was cut at a Four Seasons session with the rest of the group on hand. It was the first single Valli had put out under his own name since the 1950s, and it went almost nowhere: number 128 on Billboard's Bubbling Under chart, never cracking the Hot 100.

The Walker Brothers took their shot at it in 1966 and did a whole lot better with it than Valli had, turning a near miss into the song's success story.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.