Moonlight Shadow

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Moonlight Shadow is also the name of a novella by Banana Yoshimoto.

"Moonlight Shadow" is a pop song written by British multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield and released as a single in May 1983 and included on the album Crises in the same year. The vocals were performed by the Scottish vocalist Maggie Reilly, who had joined Mike Oldfield in 1980. A 12" single (later reissued on a 3" CD single) featured an extended version of the song with an extra verse, which appears in his compilation album The Platinum Collection; and the single B-side was "Rite of Man" which was a rare instance of Oldfield singing lead vocal.

It was long believed that the lyrics are a reference to the murder of John Lennon, although when asked about this in a 1995 interview, Oldfield responded:

[It's] not really [about Lennon]... well, perhaps, when I look back on it, maybe it was. I actually arrived in New York that awful evening when he was shot and I was staying at the Virgin Records house in Perry Street, which was just a few blocks down the road from the Dakota Building where it happened, so it probably sank into my subconscious. It was originally inspired by a film I loved - Houdini, starring Tony Curtis, which was about attempts to contact Houdini after he'd died, through spiritualism... it was originally a song influenced by that, but a lot of other things must have crept in there without me realising it.

—Mike Oldfield, [1]

The Lennon story may have arisen as a consequence of the content of the promo video that accompanied the song, which juxtaposes footage of Oldfield and his band playing the song with a loose storyline in which Oldfield plays a man who gets killed in a pistol duel. It is worth noting that there are two versions of the video, the full-length original, and a shorter one which omits a verse (the reason for the shorter version being created is unknown), and the way both versions are edited suggests that Oldfield's touring guitarist "Ant" performed the second, rockier half of the memorable guitar solo, which is not the case.

The single peaked at #4 in the British charts, making it Oldfield's second highest ranked single after "Portsmouth" which reached #3 in 1976. "Moonlight Shadow" was successful throughout Europe, spending four weeks at #2 in Germany, four weeks at #1 in Switzerland and six weeks at #1 in Norway. It was re-released as a maxi-CD single in 1993 to promote Oldfield's Elements box set.

Numerous cover versions of "Moonlight Shadow" have been performed over the years, including by The Shadows on their 1986 album Moonlight Shadow and by Oldfield himself with Anita Hegerland. In 2002 a dance version by Groove Coverage reached the German Top 10 (simultaneously, a similar version of Oldfield's "To France" by Novaspace was in the German Top 30). Japanese artist KOKIA included a cover version on her 7th single, Ningen-tte Sonna Mono ne. The game Dance Dance Revolution currently has the Missing Heart version on Dance Dance Revolution 5thMIX for PlayStation/Arcade, Dance Dance Revolution Party Collection for PlayStation 2, and Dance Dance Revolution ULTRAMIX 2 for Xbox. The retail clothing store Abercrombie & Fitch is currently using a re-mixed Groove Coverage version of the track on its April 2006 in-store ProDisc music CD from vendor "DMX" or Digital Music Express. In 2007 the song got covered by Italobrothers, an italo dance project from Italy.