This song about a schoolboy with a delicate heart was written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman.

Like Dion & The Belmonts, Pomus and Shuman were from New York City.

Other songs they wrote include "Save the Last Dance for Me," "Let's Live For Today" and "This Magic Moment."

Pomus and Shuman wrote in the offices of the Brill Building, where many pop hits of the '50s and '60 originated.

The biggest consumers of pop music at the time were teenagers, and this song was clearly targeted to them.

"It was an assignment," Pomus told Bruce Pollock in 1974. We wrote the other side of that record too and I always liked it better. It was a song called 'I've Cried Before.'

We had a song that we'd already written called 'Teenager In Love,' and Dion liked the lyric to it and wanted us to change the melody. So we just changed the melody."

Dion was a teenager when this was released, but he turned 20 about a month later.

He was one of several teen idols of this era; others included Ricky Nelson, Fabian, Frankie Avalon and Ritchie Valens.