“Nights in White Satin” by The Moody Blues

"Nights in White Satin" is Justin Hayward's song, words and music, and it first appeared as the section called "The Night" on the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed. Released as a single in 1967, it was the band's first real chart showing since "Go Now" and a sign that the new lineup, with Hayward and John Lodge in for Denny Laine and Clint Warwick, had found its own voice. It reached 19 in Britain but stalled at 103 in America in 1968.

Time was on its side. It's a slow, aching ballad that drapes itself in melancholy, all yearning vocals and a mood as heavy as velvet curtains, and it only grew more hypnotic with age. The 1972 reissue went to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks, stuck behind Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now", topped the Cash Box chart and hit number one in Canada. It sold over a million copies in the US, turned gold and became the band's biggest American single, and it climbed to nine back home that same year.

It kept coming back, reaching 14 in the UK and eight in Ireland in 1979, and the 1972 single went into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.