What are the songs that drop by unannounced in your brain every 3-4 months? “Drove All Night” is one of those songs for me.
Is it a perfect song? Yes. Yes, it is. Do you know WHY it’s a perfect song? Because you can’t explain why. That’s why. It’s otherworldly. It came to this planet on a mission of peace but found us unable to fully accept its gift.
It was written by the same two men (!!!) who wrote “Live A Virgin,” “Eternal Flame,” and “I Touch Myself.” The same two dudes wrote all of those songs.
We get real wrapped up in the mythos of Robert Johnson going down to the crossroads to make a deal with the devil meanwhile we are ignoring the fact that two white guys from Illinois and California, respectively, dropped all that plus “Alone” and “True Colors” over the course of ten years.
Another reason why it’s a perfect song? It works on just about any template and defies your efforts to name one version as “definitive.”
The Roy Orbison one comes closest to marrying function and form. A song called “Drove All Night” evoking the transmission of a muscle car, two-lane highways, and longing? 10/10, no notes even though it is the most Jeff Lynne production to every Jeff Lynne.
(God, I forgot Jason Priestly and Jennifer Connelly are in the video. What if “Wild At Heart” was extremely wholesome and wanted to sell you Gap jeans? That’s this video.)
Then the Cyndi Lauper one slides up behind you and whispers in your ear inside a Vegas night club before absolutely knocking you out with the business end of a vodka bottle. You have not heard louder drums since David Bowie recorded “Let’s Dance.”
Hers was the first version to be a hit (Orbison’s version was recorded two years earlier, but would be released three years after Lauper’s.) Like most of Lauper’s hits, it is demanding and self-assured but vulnerable thanks to the same keyboard fills that lit up her She’s So Unusual album anytime things got a little too serious.
Also, let’s take a moment to appreciate Lauper stealing the hell out of Madonna’s Breathless Mahoney vibes right out from under her a year before Dick Tracy came out.
I want to say nicer things about Celine Dion’s version but twenty-odd years later it a) is clearly the beginning of her hiatus era; b) sounds like a blurry copy of Cher’s “Believe”; and c) is perfectly calibrated to sell minivans to people who wish they owned luxury sedans. It’s…fine.
The strength of “Drove All Night” is fully realized when you head down a YouTube rabbit hole. Want a heartbreaking, slowed-down acoustic version with a soaring vocal? Done. Latin outlaw country? Done. A British woman who looks like she should be in a West End production of Phantom of the Opera who sounds like the Celine Dion version should sound like? We got you.
Chisel that shit on a mountain somewhere.
