Long Live Our Love / Right Now And Not Later

Released in 1966 on the Red Bird label, Long Live Our Love / Right Now And Not Later represents a late-career entry for The Shangri-Las, the girl group defined by their dramatic, operatic approach to pop music. By this point in the mid-sixties, the teen-melodrama sound that had propelled them to fame with Leader of the Pack was evolving, and this single captures the group navigating the shifting tastes of a post-British Invasion landscape.

The production maintains the signature lush, slightly melancholic tension established by producers like Shadow Morton, though these tracks find the group leaning into a more conventional mid-tempo style. The record remains a notable artifact of the Red Bird catalog, reflecting the label’s struggle to sustain the commercial dominance they enjoyed earlier in the decade while maintaining the high production standards that made The Shangri-Las one of the most distinctive acts of the era.