Nights in White Satin
Producer
Nights in White Satin Lyrics
Nights in white satin, never reaching the end
Letters I've written, never meaning to send
Beauty I'd always missed with these eyes before
Just what the truth is I can't say anymore
[Chorus]
'Cause I love you
Yes, I love you
Oh, how I love you-oh
[Verse 2]
Gazing at people, some hand in hand
Just what I'm going through they can't understand
Some try to tell me thoughts they cannot defend
Just what you want to be you will be in the end
[Chorus]
And I love you
Yes, I love you
Oh, how I love you
Oh, how I love you
[Flute Solo]
[Verse 3]
Nights in white satin, never reaching the end
Letters I've written, never meaning to send
Beauty I've always missed with these eyes before
Just what the truth is I can't say anymore
'Cause I love you
Yes, I love you
Oh, how I love you
Oh, how I love you-oh
'Cause I love you
Yes, I love you
Oh, how I love you
Oh, how I love you-oh
[Late Lament: Graeme Edge]
Breathe deep the gathering gloom
Watch lights fade from every room
Bedsitter people look back and lament
Another day's useless energy spent
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one
Lonely man cries for love and has none
New mother picks up and suckles her son
Senior citizens wish they were young
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colours from our sight
Red is grey and yellow, white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion
About
Written by Justin Hayward when he was 19.
Was released in 1967 as part of the Moody Blues classic concept album Days of Future Passed.
This is the last song of the concept album, which follows the course of a day, jumping between people and places to capture the typical day. The song documents the heightened emotions and intimacy of dusk/early night-time. The second half, the Late Lament, completes the cycle of the day mimicking the opening monologue and invoking the privacy that the late-night embodies.
The song was released as a single multiple times
in different versions and lengths.
The “London Festival Orchestra”, played the introduction to the song. The orchestra never really existed. It was a name given to the gathering of musicians when the album was put together.
Mike Pinder’s Mellotron MKII sampler provided the orchestral sounds in the song’s main body.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
From the dictionary –
“a one-room apartment typically consisting of a combined bedroom and sitting room with cooking facilities.”
The author of the song, Justin Hayward, said this in Issue 13 of the magazine, Performing Songwriter:
At the time when I wrote “Nights In White Satin” I didn’t own many things in the world, but I did own something totally useless which was a set of white satin sheets that this girlfriend of mine had given me. Very impractical, particularly if you have a bit of beard growth and those sheets rub against your face [laughs]. They looked quite nice, and they were quite romantic. It was really about that, about love and the end of one big affair and the beginning of another. It was about real things that were happening in my life. I suppose I always thought that I would call it “Nights in White Satin.” Now I think if I wrote it, I’d probably think of another title, probably go further into the song to look for a title. It wouldn’t be an obvious choice now, but it was right for the time. It sort of had that double meaning, which was intentional, of sort of medieval knights as well.
- 13.Peak Hour
- 14.Nights in White Satin
- 16.Twilight Time
- 28.Fly Me High
- 30.Love and Beauty
- 33.Cities
