Chords + Lyrics | All Night Long
Intro
||: N.C :||
||: Absus2 Ab | Gbsus2 Gb :||
Da Da, ooooh.
Verse 1
||: Absus2 Ab | Gbsus2 Gb | Bbm | Ab :||
Well, my friends, the time has come, to raise the roof and have some fun.
Throw away the work to be done, let the music play on.
Everybody sing, everybody dance. Lose yourself in wild romance.
We’re going to Party, Karamu, Fiesta, forever. Come on and sing along!
| Absus2 Ab | Gbsus2 Gb | Bbm | Ab | 2/4 Ab Ab6 |
We’re going to Party, Karamu, Fiesta, forever. Come on and sing along!
Chorus 1
||: Gbsus2 Gb | Gbsus2 Db | Absus2 Ab | Absus2 Dbmaj7 :||
All night long (all night), All night (all night).
All night long (all night), All night (all night).
All night long (all night), All night (all night).
All night long! (all night), Ooh, yeah (all night).
Verse 2
People dancing all in the street, see the rhythm all in their feet
Life is good, wild, and sweet, let the music play on.
Feel it in your heart and feel it in your soul, let the music take control.
We’re going to Party, Liming, Fiesta, forever. Come on and sing my song!
Chorus 2
All night long (all night), oooh (all night).
All night long (all night), yes (all night).
All night long (all night), yeah (all night).
All night long (all night), ha (all night).
Middle 8
||: 6/4 Ab Absus4 Ab Ab6 Ab Absus4 Ab | 4/4 Gb5 | Gb5 :||
Yeah, once you get started you can’t sit down.
Come join the party, it’s a merry-go-round.
Everyone’s dancing their troubles away, hey.
| 6/4 Ab Absus4 Ab Ab6 Ab Absus4 Ab |
Come join our party, see how we play!
Instrumental 1
| 4/4 Gbadd9 | N.C |
||: Gbadd9 | Gbadd9 :||
Breakdown (middle 8)
| N.C | N.C |
Tam bo li de say de moi ya. Yeah, Jambo, jumbo.
| N.C | N.C |
Way to parti o we goin’. Oh, jambali.
| N.C | N.C | Abadd9 Ab Abadd9 Ab |
Tam bo li de say de moi ya. Yeah, Jambo, jumbo.
| Ab11 | Gbmaj7 | Fm7 | Fm7 Ab Db |
Oh, O, O, O, yes. We’re gonna have a party! (Yeah… ugh).
Chorus 3
||: All night long (all night), All night, (all night). :|| x4
All night long (all night). Uh.
Instrumental 2
||: Absus2 Ab | Gbsus2 Gb | Bbm | Ab :||
Verse 3
We’re going to Party, Karamu, Fiesta, forever. Come on and sing along.
We’re going to Party, Karamu, Fiesta, forever. Come on and sing my song.
Chorus 4 (double)
||: All night long (all night), All night, (all night). :|| x4
All night long (all night). Uh.
||: All night (all night), All night, (all night). :|| x4
All night long (all night). Uh.
Everyone you meet (all night). They’re jamming in the street (all night).
All night long (all night). Yeah, I said.
Everyone you meet (all night). They’re jamming in the street (all night).
All night long! (all night). Feel good! Feel good!
End
||: Gbsus2 Gb | Gbsus2 Db | Absus2 Ab | Absus2 Dbmaj7 :||
||: (All night) :||
All Night Long Chords: Unlocking the Magic Behind the Progressions
I’ve seen very few guitar players get the All Night Long chords correct. As you can see in the lyrics and chords above, it is packed with sus2 chords, resolving to the major triad.
Later on, these are replaced with add9 and sus4 chords, before we go back to sus2 again for the end section.
What makes All Night Long‘s chords so interesting is that they mainly move between IV and V, a progression I listed as #2 on my top 10 chord progressions list.
Hardly ever do we resolve to I or VI, giving us a feeling of not wanting to stop; some may even say, continue all night long!
Intro
We start by going from V to IV, using the sus2 – 3rd for both, like this:
||: Absus2 Ab | Gbsus2 Gb :||
Amazingly, this movement only comes back once again, during the middle 8, more on that later.
Verse
The verse starts off in the same way but then adds the VI chord to great effect, like this:
||: Absus2 Ab | Gbsus2 Gb | Bbm | Ab :||
Towards the end, we play these chords again, but without the add9’s. We also end it with a 2/4 bar as Lionel go: “all night“, setting up the chorus.
| Absus2 Ab | Gbsus2 Gb | Bbm | Ab | 2/4 Ab Ab6 |
Chorus
The chorus simply reverse the chords – genius!
||: Gbsus2 Gb | Gbsus2 Db | Absus2 Ab | Absus2 Dbmaj7 :||
The set up at the end of the verse using Ab and Ab6 is now Db and Dbmaj7 instead, very subtle difference, mainly the bass changing.
In the course we work out a bunch of guitar parts that will work when you play this in a band, here’s a link: All Night Long – Guitar Lesson with TAB.
Middle 8
I mentioned that the middle 8 recycle the intro chords, it does, but also add so much:
||: 6/4 Ab Absus4 Ab Ab6 Ab Absus4 Ab | 4/4 Gb | Gb :||
First of all, it’s a 6/4 bar, secondly, there’s a vocal melody we all join in on “once you get started you can’t sit…”.
To help remember it, I’ve put this as chord names, if I used intervals instead, it would read: 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 5. Can you see this by reading All Nigh Long’s middle 8 chords as: Ab Absus4 Ab Ab6 Ab Absus4 Ab?
Instrumental + Breakdown
Next up we have the big horn stab section where we break down and do all sorts. I could tell you about this using chord names but it makes much more sense in TAB (follow that link above).
When you can play my TAB (including all the transcribed horns in the middle 8), try using only this chord chart to work out if you can play these chords all night long!
All Night Long Chord Chart | PDF + iReal Pro Download
Download my chord chart as a PDF (since people don’t typically change the key for this one), or as an iReal Pro file (perhaps you prefer it on two pages or have a better design in mind).
All Night Long TAB | Course Preview
I’ve transcribed loads of parts for All Night Long, mainly what the horns and keyboards do but also some guitar which also has been developed to work without the massive production in a standard working band.
Here’s a preview, this is the beginning of the big middle 8 section where we play the horns!
A modern standard
As one of the ultimate party songs and a must in any professional musician’s repertoire, we find Lionel Richie‘s All Night Long.
Released in 1983, it can be found on Lionel’s second solo album and his first major hit as a solo artist.
Before this, Lionel had been in the extremely successful Commodores, a band responsible for hits such as Brick House, Three Times A Lady, Boogie Nights, and Easy.
Following the immense success of All Night Long, he released We Are the World, Hello, and Dancing on the Ceiling, firmly establishing himself as one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
Released on Berry Gordy’s Motown, All Night Long is perhaps Lionel’s most popular song. When it comes to cover bands, it certainly is the one that has stuck after all these years.
All Night Long Chords: Continue Learning
Want to master this song? Check out the full TAB lesson here: All Night Long (Lionel Richie) Guitar Lesson with TAB.
Alternatively, here are five similar tunes you might enjoy:
