Songoftheday 3/25/16 - Hear the night music playing? Don't you know what it's saying? We should feel it together forever...

"Don't You Know What The Night Can Do?" - Steve Winwood
from the album Roll With It (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 11

Today's song of the day comes from British rock singer/musician Steve Winwood, who stripped down the synthesizers and went a little old-school blues-rock in 1988 for his month-long #1 pop hit "Roll With It". For the second single from that album, Steve went a little moodier (and added tons of keyboards) for a song that was a sort of first in that it got major exposure as a commercial before its own radio release. "Don't You Know What The Night Can Do?", written by Winwood with longtime collaborator Will Jennings, was co-opted by Michelob beer, who was going to be sponsoring his upcoming tour. Choosing the track from the album for the commercial while "Roll With It" was still fresh and new, it did give a strange air to people not used to rock songs from legitimate artists being used as ad fodder. Nevertheless, the song was already quite familiar when it got its own release...

"Don't You Know What The Night Can Do?" became Winwood's sixth (and so-far most recent) top-10 solo pop hit in the U.S. in October of 1988. The single also topped the Mainstream Rock chart in Billboard for two weeks (his third time there), and crossed over to their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio list at #2. Internationally, the single didn't do much, just missing the top-40 in New Zealand at #46, and popped in for only two week on the charts in his native Britain, peaking down at #89.

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Here's the cut that was used for the Michelob ad...

Up tomorrow: A bird whose flown finds real romance.