Night Moves (song)

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"Night Moves"

Single by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band
from the album Night Moves
Released	January 1977
Format	7-inch
Recorded	Toronto, 1976
Genre	Rock
Length	5:25
Label	Capitol Records
Writer(s)	Bob Seger
Producer(s)	Jack Richardson, Bob Seger
Chart positions
4 (U.S.)

"Night Moves" is a song written and performed by heartland rocker Bob Seger, from his 1976 album Night Moves. Released as a single, it began charting in early 1977, and eventually reached number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart. In doing so, it almost singlehandedly turned Seger's career from being a popular regional favorite into a national star.

Recorded by Seger and the Silver Bullet Band in Toronto, "Night Moves" is a mid-tempo number that starts quietly with acoustic guitar. Bass guitar and drums are introduced as the song's setting is described: 1962, cornfields, '60 Chevy. An intense summertime teenage affair is described, knowingly more sexual than romantic, with short instrumental lines breaking the evocative imagery sometimes in mid-sentence. Piano, female backing vocals, and organ are added as the song's emotional nostalgia builds momentum. Then suddenly it stops, as the narrative flashes forward to 15 or so years later. To a quiet acoustic guitar, the narrator, awakened by a clap of thunder and unable to fall back asleep, ponders a different sense of the title phrase. Then the rest of the instruments fall back in, for an extended coda vamp of the chorus.

Music writer Samuel Delliance of The New York Post wrote in 1977, "'Night Moves' is supposed to take place in Michigan in the early 1960s, but it is timeless and placeless. You can be across the street from Kissena Park in Queens in the early evening with no one in sight and the song will suddenly flood your mind just as it did Seger's." In his 1979 volume Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, famed rock critic Greil Marcus selected the single "Night Moves" for inclusion on same, writing simply: "The mystic chords of memory."

"Night Moves" was named by Rolling Stone as Best Single of the Year for 1977. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame named it one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll [1], Seger's only such selection.

Seger recorded a special version of "Night Moves" for the 1981 animated film American Pop. This version, with Seger's guitar replaced by a piano, has never been released on any album.