Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues

Nights in White Satin is a 1967 song by The Moody Blues, written by guitarist and singer Justin Hayward and first released on the album Days of Future Passed. A 1972 reissue of the single went to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Cash Box chart. It is the band's biggest American hit.

Hayward was 19 and on tour with the band in Belgium when he wrote it. The title came from a set of satin sheets a girlfriend had given him. He wrote the two verses sitting on the edge of a bed. At the time one relationship was ending for him and another was starting. He has said that every word in the song means something to him. He counts it among his most personal pieces of writing.

The rest of the band did not think much of it at first. Hayward played it for them in a rehearsal room and got a lukewarm response. Keyboard player Mike Pinder had recently bought a Mellotron, a keyboard that plays back taped recordings of real instruments. He asked Hayward to run through the song again. Pinder added a string line on the Mellotron. That part changed how the others heard it. The riff stayed on the finished record.

The Moody Blues played the song for the BBC months before they made the album version. The album recording was made on October 8, 1967, at Decca's Studio One in Broadhurst Gardens, West Hampstead, in London. Tony Clarke produced the session. Engineer Derek Varnals worked with him to stack double-tracked vocal harmonies. They ran the voices through the studio's echo chambers for a wide, open sound. The lineup was Hayward on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, Ray Thomas on flute and backing vocals, John Lodge on bass and backing vocals, Graeme Edge on drums, and Pinder on Mellotron.

On the album, the song closed a cycle that followed one day from dawn to night. It was listed under the title The Night. Hayward has said the song was recorded well before the rest of the album. He has also said its title helped give the record its day-to-night shape. Days of Future Passed is often counted among the first concept albums in rock and one of the early records of what would become progressive rock.

The orchestra on the track is credited to the London Festival Orchestra. It was a group of session players brought together and conducted by Peter Knight. Knight also wrote the arrangements. The orchestra plays the introduction, the last chorus and the spoken section at the end. Pinder's Mellotron plays the strings in the main body of the song. The closing poem, Late Lament, was written by Edge and read aloud by Pinder over the orchestra. Later compilations gave it its own track listing. Edge recited it himself on the band's orchestral tours years later.

Deram released the song as a single on November 3, 1967, with Cities on the B-side. The single was cut down to around three minutes, with the orchestral passages and the poem removed. It reached number one in the Netherlands and in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium, and number six in Flanders and Switzerland. It peaked at number 19 in Britain and number 103 in the United States.

Deram reissued the single in August 1972. American radio picked it up this time. Edge credited independent FM DJs in the United States for the new airplay. It started as a regional hit in Seattle. From there it spread down the West Coast to San Francisco and Los Angeles, then went national. The record spent two weeks at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, behind Johnny Nash's I Can See Clearly Now. It went to number one on Cash Box and on Canada's RPM chart. It was certified gold in the United States for a million copies sold. The reissue reached number nine in the UK. A 1979 reissue took it to number 14 there. The 1972 run also pushed Days of Future Passed into the American top ten, five years after it first came out. The 1972 single was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

The song is in E minor. A turn to an F major chord gives the melody its dark, unsettled pull. Play along with the key and tempo on Song IQ.

Many artists have recorded it. The Dickies turned it into a fast punk single that reached the UK top 40 in 1979. Giorgio Moroder released a disco version in 1976 under the title Knights in White Satin. Elkie Brooks took it to number 33 in the UK in 1982. The German singer Sandra had a number one in Israel with her 1995 version. Hayward has said that Bettye LaVette's soul version is his favorite cover. He told an interviewer he burst into tears the first time he played it.

The song has also had a long life on screen. A 1987 film took its name from the song and used the original recording in a rooftop dance scene. Tim Burton built much of the music and marketing for his 2012 film Dark Shadows around it. In 2023 it played under a Bleu de Chanel commercial starring Timothée Chalamet.