"Cross My Heart" is the first song on Pleasures of the Harbor (1967), Ochs's first album for A&M Records and his first foray into orchestral instrumentation, or "baroque-folk".
"[2] Ian Freebairn-Smith arranged the music on "Cross My Heart" and producer Larry Marks recalled that the orchestra had difficulty keeping pace with Ochs, who tended to slow his singing for the bridge and speed up for the verses.
Cash Box said that it's a "poetic, mid tempo ballad with classical backing and overall flavor that is closer to pop than folk.
"[5] Boston Broadside, in its review of Pleasures of the Harbor, wrote that "Cross My Heart" was "both naive and pretentious ... it suffers from the colorlessness of Ochs' singing".
[8] Other performers who have recorded "Cross My Heart" include Eugene Chadbourne, Neil Hamburger and Jim and Jean.