Give Me The Night chords by George Benson

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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

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

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

Bridge 2

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

Give Me The Night chords and progressions

Great news buddy, 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, honest guv!

Here’s the main chord progression: VI – II – III – IV. In the key of Fm, that’s:

||: Fm7 Bbm7 | Cm7 Dbmaj7 :||

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, I hear you cry. That’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 Gb | Ebm7 Db :||

Next, we go to an Emaj7 and I feel Lydian is the sound of this chord, next, a Db7, here 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:

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, just look at George, he’s roller skating as he’s doing it!

Give Me The Night chords | Related pages

Five similar tunes

When you can play Give Me The Night's chords, try these five tunes from the song book.

George Benson

With a career like no other, Benson spent 1954-1976 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.