"The End of the World" is a pop song written by composer Arthur Kent and lyricist Sylvia Dee, who often worked as a team. They wrote the song for American singer Skeeter Davis, and her recording of it was highly successful in the early 1960s, reaching the Top-5 on four different charts, including #2 on the main BillboardHot 100. It spawned many cover versions.
Background
"The End of the World" is a sad song about the aftermath of a romantic breakup. Dee, the lyricist, said she drew on her sorrow from her father's death to set the mood for the song. Davis recorded her version with sound engineer Bill Porter on June 8, 1962, at the RCA Studios in Nashville, produced by Chet Atkins, and featuring Floyd Cramer. Released by RCA Records in December 1962, "The End of the World" peaked in March 1963 at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 2 on Billboards Hot Country Singles chart, No. 1 on Billboards Easy Listening chart, and No. 4 on Billboards Hot R&B Singles chart. It is the first, and, to date, only time that a song cracked the Top 10 on all four Billboard charts. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 2 song of 1963. In the Davis version, after she sings the whole song through in the key of B-flat-major, the song modulates up by a half step to the key of B, where Davis speaks the first two lines of the final stanza, before singing the rest of the stanza, ending the song. "The End of the World" was played at Atkins's funeral in an instrumental by Marty Stuart. The song was also played at Davis's own funeral at the Ryman Auditorium. Her version has been featured in several films, TV shows, and video games.
In 1975, American pop music duo Carpenters released a cover of "The End of the World" as a promotional single from their live album Live in Japan. It was recorded at the Festival Hall, Osaka, Japan.
In 1990, English singer Sonia covered "End of the World". The fifth and final single from her debut album, Everybody Knows, it reached number 18 in the UK, the same chart position as the original. The single's B-side "Can't Help the Way That I Feel" also appeared on Sonia's debut album. This was her final single with Stock Aitken Waterman.
Charts
Other versions
recorded the song in Swedish, as "Allt är förbi", scoring a Svensktoppen hit for seven weeks between 9 October–19 November 1966. Another version became No. 2 hit in Sweden in September 1966 via a local cover by Mike Wallace & the Caretakers. A version by Allison Paige peaked at number 72 on the BillboardHot Country Singles & Tracks chart in May 2000. "The End of the World" has also been remade by a number of other artists including:
