The 1960s File Feature
To Each His Own
To Each His Own: The Platters' Autumnal EleganceA Group at a CrossroadsBy the autumn of 1960, the Platters were navigating waters that had grown considerably…
01 The Story
To Each His Own: The Platters' Autumnal Elegance
A Group at a Crossroads
By the autumn of 1960, the Platters were navigating waters that had grown considerably rougher since the mid-decade heights of Only You, The Great Pretender, and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. A highly publicized legal incident in 1959 had threatened the group's commercial standing and their relationships with some radio stations and venues, and the pop landscape was shifting beneath them; the clean-voiced vocal group that had seemed perfectly calibrated for the late-50s mainstream now faced competition from newer sounds and rapidly changing tastes. To Each His Own arrived in this context as an attempt to hold the significant ground they had claimed over half a decade of remarkable consistency.
The Song Before the Group: A Classic Revisited
To Each His Own had a history that predated the Platters by more than a decade. The song was written in 1946 and had been a major pop hit for multiple artists of that era, most notably Eddy Howard and the Ink Spots. By covering it in 1960, the Platters were doing something that their audience understood: taking a proven piece of material and running it through their distinctive vocal treatment to produce something familiar yet newly charged. The group had always been more comfortable in the mainstream ballad tradition than in the rougher currents of rock and roll, and a 1946 standard fit that sensibility as naturally as a well-cut suit.
Still Capable of Moving the Needle
To Each His Own debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on October 10, 1960, entering at number 72. The climb was brisk and purposeful; within three weeks it had reached number 32, and by the week of November 7, 1960, it had settled at its peak position of number 21. The song spent 11 weeks on the chart in total, a solid commercial performance that demonstrated the group still had a substantial and loyal audience even in changed circumstances. Getting a 1946 song to number 21 on the 1960 chart required real vocal authority and genuine commercial momentum, and the Platters delivered both. The debut on October 10 was followed by a rapid ascent through the autumn weeks, peaking on November 7 and then sustaining its presence for a full 11 weeks before finally leaving the chart. That kind of staying power wasn't manufactured; it reflected real listener engagement with the record across a broad demographic.
The Voice at the Center
The Platters' commercial success had always rested on the exceptional talent of their lead singer, Tony Williams, whose tenor had a range and emotional expressiveness that was simply unusual at the top of the pop charts. On To Each His Own, Williams brought his full instrument to a song that rewarded mature vocal interpretation, and the result was a recording that sounds, even now, like someone genuinely singing rather than performing for the camera. The group's harmonies framed his lead with the precision and warmth that had made them famous, providing a rich textural background for the lyric's meditation on love and individual choice.
Dignity in the Longer Haul
The Platters' career trajectory after 1960 involved various lineup changes and the eventual departure of Tony Williams, which fundamentally altered the group's character and commercial standing. Their peak years, from roughly 1955 to 1960, constitute one of the significant bodies of work in early rhythm-and-blues-influenced pop, and To Each His Own is one of the records from that period's coda. It represents a group maintaining their standards and their dignity under real commercial pressure, which is its own kind of achievement. That they could still place a record in the top 25 while dealing with public controversy and a changing pop landscape is a testament to the depth of the loyalty they had built with their audience over five years of exceptional recordings. Press play and hear what vocal elegance sounded like in the autumn of 1960.
“To Each His Own” — The Platters' singular moment on the 1960s charts.
02 Song Meaning
To Each His Own: Love as Personal Reckoning
The Philosophical Title
To Each His Own borrows a formulation from classical philosophy, a principle asserting that every individual must live according to their own nature and find their own version of the good life. In the context of a pop song, that philosophical freight gets channeled into something more personal: the idea that love, whatever else it may be, is an individual experience that cannot be reduced to general rules or shared formulas. What matters is what matters to you, and the song's lyric builds its entire emotional logic on that foundation.
The Lyric's Emotional Logic
The song's narrator observes that other people have their own ideas of love, their own romantic ideals and preferences, and then asserts something private and definite: that for them, one specific person is the answer to all those questions. The philosophical generalization in the title gives way to a particular declaration. This movement from the general to the specific is one of the oldest rhetorical strategies in love poetry, and it works here because it earns its conclusion by first acknowledging its own subjectivity. The narrator isn't claiming universal truth; they're claiming personal truth, which is actually more convincing.
The Voice of Experience
The song's emotional coloring is autumnal rather than breathlessly adolescent. This is not a song about falling in love for the first time; it is a song about having arrived somewhere, about looking at one person and knowing with the confidence of considered judgment rather than youthful infatuation that this is the right place to be. Tony Williams's mature tenor, with its gravity and its range, suits this emotional register perfectly. There is a world of experience in the way he approaches the lyric, and that weight is part of what makes the recording so persuasive.
The Standard as Cultural Memory
Because To Each His Own was already a fourteen-year-old standard when the Platters recorded it, their version carried additional resonance for listeners who knew it from earlier recordings. The song arrived with accumulated meaning, layered with associations from its 1946 origins and the multiple versions that had circulated in the intervening years. Covering a standard was also an implicit argument: this song is good enough to revisit, this lyric has not exhausted its meaning. The Platters made that argument credibly and with evident conviction.
Why Permanence Has Its Own Appeal
In the context of early-1960s pop, which was largely preoccupied with the mercurial emotions of youth and the excitement of novelty, a song about settled conviction and mature love offered something genuinely different. To Each His Own proposed that romantic love could be a destination arrived at through reflection rather than a state fallen into through chemistry. That proposition has its own deep appeal, and it reached audiences in 1960 the same way it reaches listeners now: as a dignified, quietly confident statement about what matters and why.
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