“Midnight Blue” is a title of a Top Ten hit single by Melissa Manchester that was taken from her 1975 album, Melissa. Billboard magazine described the song as “a classically elegant quiet ballad about a pair of longtime lovers putting aside their aggravations until the dawn in order to try making it one more time in memory of all their old times together.”
The song had been written by Manchester in 1973 as her first collaboration with Carole Bayer Sager, who would be Manchester’s regular lyricist over the next five years; Manchester would recall: “the songs that I wrote with Carole…all came out of conversations.
Therefore the tone of the songs was very conversational. The listener always feels like they are in the moment when that first line is uttered.”
According to Manchester the genesis of “Midnight Blue” was a conversation she and Bayer Sager “had about our young husbands, and how as young women we didn’t know how to get through the hard times that every relationship has”; the song was essentially finished but still lacking a title when either Manchester or Bayer Sager said: “Midnight Blue” which Manchester opines “was the perfect fit for the song’s overall feeling”.
After meeting Manchester backstage after Bette Midler’s Carnegie Hall concert of 23 June 1972 Bayer Sager suggested she and Manchester write a song to cut as a demo, the result being “Midnight Blue”.
Although Manchester’s first two album releases, Home to Myself and Bright Eyes in respectively 1973 and 1974, would overall feature eight songs she had co-written with Bayer Sager, Manchester herself would not record “Midnight Blue” until 1975.
The demo of “Midnight Blue” was submitted by Sager and Manchester to producer Vini Poncia in hopes of having his purported client Dionne Warwick record the song: instead, the demo convinced Poncia to record the singer of the demo who was Manchester herself.
Poncia waited for almost two years – allowing Manchester to fulfill her obligations to the producers of her two Bell Records albums — before approaching Manchester with regard to producing her.
In the interim Manchester had personally pitched “Midnight Blue” to Dusty Springfield according to Springfield’s friend Sue Cameron who recalls Manchester visiting Springfield’s Laurel Canyon home and playing Springfield the demo of “Midnight Blue” – Cameron (quote): “She told Melissa no. Melissa leaves the house. I went: ‘Are you crazy?’”
An alternate background scenario for Manchester’s recording “Midnight Blue” is related by Carole Bayer Sager in her autobiography: according to Bayer Sager she “pretty much stalked” Richard Perry to “get him to listen to our song. Finally, after I cornered him at an industry party he agreed to listen to the demo of ‘Midnight Blue’.
” Bayer Sager played the demo for Perry at his Manhattan hotel suite, first telling him: “The girl I wrote the song with his singing here and she wants to record it…and I was hoping if you liked it maybe you’d produce it.”
Bayer Sager recalls that after hearing the demo Perry told her: “This song could be a big hit. I have a young producer who works for me: Vini Poncia, and I think he could make a really good record with Melissa as the artist.
I’d executive produce it.” According to Bayer Sager, Perry himself played the completed track of “Midnight Blue” for Arista Records president Clive Davis who greenlit Poncia producing Manchester’s album Melissa from which “Midnight Blue” was issued as the lead single on May 1975 (the single edit trimmed 29 seconds off the album track’s outro).
On the original tracklisting for the album Melissa the track’s title is spelled “Midnite Blue”, a spelling which was retained for the track’s single release in Australia.
