Intro
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :|| x4
Verse 1
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :||
Whenever dark has fallen.
You know the spirit of the party starts to come alive.
Until the day is dawning.
You can throw out all the blues and hit the city lights.
Chorus 1
| Bbm7 | Eb11 |
‘Cause there’s music in the air and lots of lovin’ everywhere.
| Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 |
So give me the night (alright, tonight).
| Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 |
Give me the night (every night).
Verse 2
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :||
You need the evening action.
A place to dine, a glass of wine, a little late romance.
It’s a chain reaction.
You’ll see the people of the world coming out to dance.
Chorus 2
| Bbm7 | Eb11 |
‘Cause there’s music in the air and lots of lovin’ everywhere.
| Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 |
So give me the night (every night).
| Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 |
Give me the night (alright, tonight).
Bridge 1
||: Abm7 Gb | Ebm7 Db :||
So come on out tonight and we’ll lead the others.
On a ride through paradise.
And if you feel all right, then we can be lovers.
| Abm7 Gb | Emaj7 | Db7 |
‘Cause I see that starlight look in your eyes.
| Emaj7 | Eb11 |
And don’t you know we can fly?
Chorus 3
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :||
Just give me the night (alright, tonight).
Give me the night (yeah, yeah, yeah).
Solo
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :|| x4
Chorus 4
| Bbm7 | Eb11 |
‘Cause there’s music in the air and lots of lovin’ everywhere.
| Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 |
So give me the night (every night).
| Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 |
Give me the night (alright, tonight).
Bridge 2
||: Abm7 Gb | Ebm7 Db :||
So come on out tonight and we’ll lead the others.
On a ride through paradise.
And if you feel all right, then we can be lovers.
| Abm7 Gb | Emaj7 | Db7 |
‘Cause I see that starlight look in your eyes.
| Emaj7 | Eb11 |
And don’t you know we can fly?
Verse 3
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :||
And if we stay together.
We’ll feel the rhythm of the evening taking us up high.
Never mind the weather.
We’ll be dancing in the street until the morning light.
Chorus 4 (with breakdown)
| Bbm7 | Eb11 |
‘Cause there’s music in the air and lots of lovin’ everywhere.
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :|| breakdown
So give me the night (all right, tonight).
||: Give me the night (all right, tonight) :|| x3
Chorus 5 (full band)
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :||
||: Give me the night (all right, tonight) :|| x3
So give me the night (all right, tonight).
Chorus 6
| Bbm7 | Eb11 |
‘Cause there’s music in the air and lots of lovin’ everywhere.
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :||
So give me the night (all right, tonight).
||: Give me the night (all right, tonight) :|| x3
Chorus 7
| Bbm7 | Eb11 |
‘Cause there’s music in the air and lots of lovin’ everywhere.
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :||
So give me the night (we can reach the stars tonight) (all right, tonight).
||: (We can reach the stars tonight) (all right, tonight) :|| x3
Chorus 8
| Bbm7 | Eb11 |
‘Cause there’s music in the air and lots of lovin’ everywhere.
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :||
So give me the night (We can reach the stars tonight, all right, tonight).
||: Give me the night (all right, tonight) :|| x3
Chorus 9
| Bbm7 | Eb11 |
‘Cause there’s music in the air and lots of lovin’ everywhere.
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :||
So give me the night (We can reach the stars tonight, all right, tonight).
||: Give me the night (all right, tonight) :|| x3
Give Me The Night Chords: Learn the progressions
Great news, Give Me The Night is not at all as difficult as you may have thought when you first listened to it. It’s actually pretty simple!
Here’s the main chord progression: VI – II – III – IV. In the key of Fm, that’s:
||: Fm7 (VI) Bbm7 (II) | Cm7 (III) Dbmaj7 (IV) :||
I’d like to think of Give Me The Night’s chords as just a blues in minor as once I did, it was easy. Compare it with Ain’t No Sunshine’s chords and especially The Thrill Is Gone’s chords. Do this and you’ll soon feel more confident.
Once I realized this, I just solo with my F minor blues vocabulary. What’s that? For me, it’s the F Minor Pentatonic as a framework, add the 9, b5, and maj7. Maybe the b6 as well. Any more than this is just considered chromatic.
Anyway, let’s focus on the chords… The chorus starts on the II chord, then goes to the V, before we go back to our minor blues loop, like this:
| Bbm7 | Eb11 |
||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :||
All that is left now are the bridge chords, they start on what should have been the I chord, that’s an Ab. But instead of being I, it is a modal interchange to Aeolian, making Abm chord VI.
Using simpler language, we could think of this change as going from Fm to Abm. The chords are VI – V – II – I, like this:
||: Abm7 (VI) Gb (V) | Ebm7 (II) Db (I) :||
Next, we go to an Emaj7 and I feel Lydian is the sound of this chord, next, a Db7, now we’re probably looking at Lydian Dominant, that’s Db Lydian with a b7, instead of maj7.
Back to Emaj7, then an Eb11, which we’ve seen before it’s time to go to our blues loop again, like this:
| Abm7 Gb | Emaj7 | Db7 |
| Emaj7 | Eb11 |
Before you throw the towel in here and think, I knew this wasn’t going to be easy, remember this: You don’t solo over these chords, you just hold them as the singer sings.
When you solo, it’s just an F minor blues, I told you it wasn’t as difficult as you thought it was going to be, look at George, he’s roller skating as he’s doing it!
Give Me The Night Chords | Related Pages
Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics
George Benson tunes
With a career like no other, George Benson spent 1954 to 1976 mainly playing Jazz guitar before he signed for Warner and started singing.
Hits include This Masquerade, Breezin’, In Your Eyes, Give Me The Night, On Broadway, and an enormous amount of jazz standards.
George Benson On the web
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was a guitar lesson about Give Me The Night chords, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not by practising scales or studying theory in isolation.