It's Only Make Believe

It's Only Make Believe — Conway Twitty's Rocket from Obscurity to Number One

A Nobody Who Became Everybody

In the summer of 1958, Harold Jenkins was an obscure rockabilly singer from Mississippi who had borrowed his stage name from two towns he spotted on a map — Conway, Arkansas, and Twitty, Texas. He had spent years playing clubs, cutting sides that went nowhere, and watching Elvis Presley from what must have felt like an enormous distance. Then, on a night when he and his band needed something to fill a set gap at a Hamilton, Ontario venue, Twitty began playing around with a song idea at the piano and asked his drummer Jack Nance to help finish it. What they assembled that night became It's Only Make Believe, and within months it would be number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on November 24, 1958. The trajectory was among the more dramatic in the chart's history: the record entered at number 65 in September and climbed every single week until it reached the top.

The Climb Up the Chart

Few records in the Hot 100's early years demonstrated the same relentless upward momentum. The song spent fifteen weeks on the Billboard chart, making its debut in mid-September 1958 and ascending steadily through October and November until it arrived at the summit. By late October it was already at number 2; the week of November 24, it cleared the final hurdle. That kind of slow-burn ascent was not unusual in an era when radio airplay and jukebox plays drove chart movement, but the steepness of the climb and the eventual height reached gave the record a story that spread through the industry. Conway Twitty had come from nowhere to the top of the American popular music chart in roughly two months.

The Elvis Shadow and the Twitty Voice

It is impossible to discuss the song without acknowledging the very large sonic shadow of Elvis Presley. Twitty's vocal approach on It's Only Make Believe is close enough to Presley's phrasing and intensity to have drawn immediate comparisons; some radio listeners in 1958 reportedly believed it was a new Presley release. That comparison is double-edged: it explains some of the song's immediate commercial traction (the Presley sound was the most commercially powerful sound in American pop at that moment), but it also raises the question of whether Twitty brought anything to the record that was distinctly his own. The answer, on close listening, is yes: his vocal has a particular emotional rawness and a register in the lower passages that Presley rarely inhabited, and the arrangement's production has its own character separate from Presley's Sun or RCA recordings.

A Career Made and Then Remade

The success of It's Only Make Believe transformed Twitty's professional circumstances almost overnight. Where he had been playing regional venues to modest audiences, the number 1 chart position placed him on television variety shows and opened doors to national touring. The record was a significant international hit as well, reaching the top of the charts in the United Kingdom. However, Twitty's subsequent career in rock and pop never fully sustained the heights of this debut hit. He eventually pivoted to country music, where he became one of the most successful artists the genre has ever produced, accumulating more number 1 country singles than almost anyone in history. It's Only Make Believe was the door that opened everything.

What Endures

The song's staying power across more than six decades comes from the quality of the emotional performance at its center. Whatever debts the recording owes to contemporary influences, it captures something genuine: the yearning of someone constructing an elaborate private fantasy about a love that isn't actually returned. That theme is perennial, the performance is committed, and the chart history is extraordinary. Number 1 on November 24, 1958, after one of the great climbs in Billboard history. Put it on and hear what raw ambition sounds like when it finally gets what it's been reaching for.

“It's Only Make Believe” — Conway Twitty's singular moment on the 1950s charts.