Songfacts®:

• Four guys from the Bronx - Dion DiMucci (better known mononymously as Dion), Angelo D'Aleo, Carlo Mastrangelo, and Fred Milano - cruised the streets singing doo-wop harmonies so tight they could have been siblings. They called themselves Dion & The Belmonts, an ode to their stomping grounds on Belmont Avenue. (Two had lived right there, the others just a hop, skip, and a doo-wop away.)
  
  In 1958, they strolled into a new record label, Laurie Records, and laid down "I Wonder Why," their first single and a doo-wop doozy. It shot up the charts, peaking at #22 on the Billboard Hot 100, proving their Bronx harmonies could win over the whole nation.
• The song is a lovesick lament. Lead singer Dion pours his heart out, confessing his love for a girl but clueless as to why he feels this way. He wonders if she feels the same and hopes she's "always true" when he's not around.
• Melvin Anderson wrote the music with Ricardo Weeks penning the lyrics, but Dion & The Belmonts put their own spin on the song. "It was the first time Angelo (D'Aleo), Carlo (Mastrangelo), Freddie (Milano) and myself got together in a room and came up with these very distinctive ideas for this song," Dion told Uncut magazine in 2024. "Basically, we wanted to sound like the horns at the Apollo theater."
  
  "When I listen back to my early stuff, I hear a lot of innocence, but I don't sound like that anymore," he continued. "I like melodic stuff, but I'm so blues based. I define the blues as the naked cry of the human heart longing to be in union with God and it was always the foundation of everything I did."
• UK rock and roll revival act Showaddywaddy covered "I Wonder Why" in 1978, taking it to #2 on the UK Singles Chart. The Chiffons also recorded a version on their 1963 album One Fine Day.
• The song was used in these movies:
  
  Game Boys (2008)
  Deuces Wild (2002)
  There Goes My Baby (1994)
  A Bronx Tale (1993)
  Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)
  Christine (1983)