Songfacts®:

• The 1959 hit "Sixteen Reasons" is as simple and sweet as it gets. In the song, actress/singer Connie Stevens lists 16 things she loves about her man. There's no innuendo or dark subtext involved. It's just hand holding, snuggling in cars, and a freckled nose. The song is as 1959 as it gets, which is probably why movie director David Lynch chose it for Mulholland Drive in 2001 (more on that below).
  
  The song was sappy even for its time, and Stevens never performed it live. She felt it was silly for a grown woman to do a song "aimed at 12-year-old girls."
• The odds were stacked against the song. Stevens starred in the popular television series Hawaiian Eye (1959-1963), and her song "Sixteen Reasons" was to be used in the program. Warner Bros. produced the show and weren't happy when Stevens didn't use their in-house music publisher, Music Publishing Holding Company (MPHC), to record or distribute. So they barred her from performing "Sixteen Reasons" on Hawaiian Eye and The Ed Sullivan Show. Marketing wasn't as ubiquitous in 1959 as it is now, and the loss of those opportunities was significant. However, "Sixteen Reasons" wouldn't be denied and still found its way into public favor.
• The song hit #3 on the Hot 100 and #10 on the Billboard Hot R&B. It went to #9 on the UK Singles and stayed on that chart for 12 weeks. It was Stevens' second hit of 1959, following "Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)," a duet with Edd Byrnes that went to #4. Hot start considering the songs were the first and third she ever put out, but things fizzled quickly after that. Most of her remaining music failed to chart at all. She released her last single in 1972 with "Simple Girl."
• An estimated 2 million copies of Stevens' "Sixteen Reasons" have sold.
• The B-side to Stevens' "Sixteen Reasons" was "Little Sister."
• Husband-and-wife team Bill and Doree Post wrote "Sixteen Reasons." They recorded a few other singles in the late '50s and early '60s for Crest Records, a subsidiary of American Music that went out of business in 1963. The biggest Crest production was "Three Stars" by Tommy Dee. The Posts released their own version of "Sixteen Reasons" in 1963, but it didn't reach the airwaves until after stomach cancer ended Doree's days.
• Don Ralke arranged the Stevens version. He had a long career making music for Hollywood movie studios.
• David Lynch resurrected "Sixteen Reasons" when he featured it in his 2001 film Mulholland Drive - it's the song being recorded by youngsters in '50s getup in the movie-within-the-movie that protagonist Betty Elms is fatefully selected to star in. In the scene, Australian actress Elizabeth Lackey lip-syncs the tune.
• As was the norm for hit songs of that era, several covers came out shortly after the '59 success. In 1960 alone it was covered by at least five artists in the UK, Italy, and New Zealand. Lawrence Welk included the song on The Golden Millions in 1964, and sitcom duo Laverne & Shirley paired it with their "Chapel of Love" novelty single in 1976.