“Into The Night” (1980) by Benny Mardones is a GEM of a song that deserves more love

Your disingenuous is on full blast, OP.

Troll.

R1 I was born in 1987. Sorry. I actually just discovered him days ago.

i love songs like this that just build and build and build.... like a great showtune or barry manilow song. this song is one of my favorites.

[quote] I was born in 1987.

No, you weren't. And this is one of your agenda threads, Defarto.

He even sounded great live.

Anyways...

I discovered it through this stupid but cute Gen Z TikToker who rocks an 80s haircut and aesthetic and lip-synchs to 80s songs. That was the first time I heard it.

A song by a then 34 year old man about wanting to fuck a 16 year old.

He was 34 here. The average person looked so much older then than they do now.

Sometimes you see photos of people from the 50s and they were only 30 and look 50 already meanwhile these days they look 20.

"A song by a then 34 year old man about wanting to fuck a 16 year old."

And your point is...???

True r8. Look at any move star from back in the day. After they hit their 40s they looked so different than modern celebrities do at the same age.

I heard a DJ say that whenever he plays this song he gets a ton of calls about it.

This woman is crushing on that TikToker lol.

These older ladies like that 80s aesthetic, huh?

I used to adore this song. Was always very moved by it.

All that changed a moment ago when I saw that official video that OP posted for the very first time. Iccccckkkkkk!!!!

What a creepy video. That video turns my stomach. This guy looks like he could be 50 years old and the girl looks like she could be 12.

I feel like I should go take a shower and wash all that dirt and filth off me!

I don't give a shit, I've always loved this song.

Mardones died not too long ago.

He's coming for your daughter!

The video is creepy but it’s a great song.

Great song. It's one of those that I used to sing at the top of my lungs in the car. RIP Benny

That wannabe 80s TikToker at r6 really has all the “old” ladies creaming their parties, huh? He must remind them of when they were young in the 80s lol

Even though he’s young in 2021.

It’s pervy as fuck, but it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.

In the opening shot, is his T-shirt belted under his blazer?

Benny looks like the proto-Caitlyn Jenner.

I bought the single the 1st time around.

[quote]Benny looks like the proto-Caitlyn Jenner.

Between the long hair and the stripped shirt, he definitely had a Caitlyn thing about him.

Great tune, and he sings the hell out of it.

When Benny turned to the camera in OP's video, I thought it was a trans woman.

Jesus that's full pedo shit in the video.

Oh, my God! That video was hilarious. The magic carpet ride at the end - to die.

Hilarious.

This is another one that is as equally creepy and unintentionally hilarious 😂

[quote]I thought it was a trans woman

Definitely looked like a trans woman.

[quote]In the opening shot, is his T-shirt belted under his blazer?

Definitely looked like he had a tiny belt around the t-shirt.

And no one has commented on the pink socks! So early 80s.

Can one of you gays come slap these older women obsessing over him?

On repeat

im so glad i never saw the video for this....i dont listen to lyrics much so it never bothered me...i love the song so much i actually turned the music off so it doesnt ruin the song for me. it surprisingly distasteful.

"You're sixteen, you're jailbait, and I'm doing time".

Love this song. Wouldn’t say it’s forgotten though, at least not by those who turned on a radio in the early 80s.

I thought y'all were talking about Steal Away (Into the Night) at first.

He’s literally gasping during the crescendo of the song, as if he’s singing passionately from a real experience that he had.

"Forgotten"?! It's played six times a day on all the Adult Contemporary stations!

Wow R5, that was amazing. He was really a talented singer.

Another be from the pervy vaults...

^ Another *one*

I love this song but yeah that video is cringey.

The comments under the YouTube video used to be hilarious. The video always gave me the creeps though. LOL at him staring in her window with the creeper van in the background.

Gary Puckett and the Union Gap sang about a similar topic but showed some restraint with "Young Girl."

Look, let’s be real, a lot of older men like fresh young meat, straight and gay.

Which one of you did this?

Thanks OP. I had never heard this song before. The chorus is sublime, rest of the song ok.

If I Could Fly, I’d pick you up!

Little Bitty Pretty One is gross as shit too. Especially considering it was in every kid's movie trailer for awhile

Was this a young Jeffrey Epstein?

Ha! I remember this song. Heard almost every friggin' morning while getting dressed for junior high. Good times.

She was 16?! Hard pass, too old.

Yeah, 16. Yuck. Might as well be 60.

And even worse, Bryan. She was a girl with a vagina!

A vagina? Yuck to whatever that is

I think it's a heart condition.

he looks like a serial killer

It was 1980. We all did.

[quote] A song by a then 34 year old man about wanting to fuck a 16 year old.

🎼🎼“Se-pa-RATED by FOOLS, who don’t know what love is yeeeeeet...”🎼🎼🎼

[quote]Anyways

OMG, my eyes welled up watching this. I had no idea ... .

I bought the album back in '80 and still have it somewhere ion this house.

Time sure flies.

RIP Benny.

He loved the crowd that came to see him and they loved him back.

They knew all the words and helped him sing.

OMG R63 now I’m crying!! 😭😭😭

R63 That was heartbreaking.

He sure got a lot of mileage out of one song. Has any one-hot-wonder done as well? TWO runs on the charts? Impressive.

This Chilean cover band's lead singer is phenomenal.

He nails it.

this song (and Mardones' performance) is just so fucking awesome. The age of the girl never occurred to me as a problem, i guess i didn't think of him as much older. It was before MTV so the song had a video but didnt get tons of airplay

I can forgive the low budget video, I mean it was 1980 after all and music videos were a step above a high school A/V club production. The 1980 version went to #11 and the 1989 rerelease hit #20, and is a AC/yacht rock staple. Supposedly he was difficult to work with and hurt his career.

Songfacts.com offers some history of the song:

"With the opening line, "She's just 16 years old, leave her alone, they said," we understand if you think this song sounds a little statutory. Benny Mardones told Songfacts that the 16-year-old girl he's singing about was named Heidi, and she lived in his apartment in Spanish Harlem. Their relationship was purely platonic, however, as Benny looked after Heidi and her family after her father left. Benny would pay her $50 a week to walk his basset hound, Zanky.

Mardones wrote this song with Robert Tepper, who would later write the song "No Easy Way Out" for the movie Rocky IV. Benny told Songfacts: "One night Robert Tepper and I were up writing songs. It was about a week before we were leaving for Miami to cut the first big album, which was Never Run, Never Hide. We thought that we already had the hit song, so did Polydor Records. It was a song called 'Might Have Been Love.' But at the last minute we're sitting there one night at my apartment trying to write. Bobby kept playing the chord changes and we tried 18 melodies and 30 kinds of lyrics and all of a sudden the key in the door turned and I said, 'Oh my God, it's daylight.' Because we liked to keep the blinds down.

And in she walks, 16 years old, dressed for school in a miniskirt, little stacked heels, adorable, 16-going-on-21. She said, 'You've been up all night?' and of course it was obvious. I said, 'Yeah, we have.' She says, 'Okay, come on, Zanky,' and she walks the dog out. When she leaves and goes out the door, my partner goes, 'Oh, my God.' I said, 'Hey, Bob. She's just 16 years old, leave her alone.' And literally five minutes later I said, 'Play that lick again, Bobby.' So he played the lick and I went (singing), 'she's just 16 years old, leave her alone, they say.' Then I thought about her dad and what he had done, and that's where I got (singing), 'Separated by fools who don't know what love is yet.' The chorus was, 'you're too young for me, but if I could fly, I'd pick you up and take you into the night and show you love like you've never seen.' Then the verse 'It's like having it all and letting it show. It's like having a dream where nobody has a heart. It's like having it all and watching it fall apart.' Because his success was not the family's success; it was just his. 'I can't measure my love there's nothing compared to it' - it was all about the abandonment of this family and this 16-year-old girl."

While the song has stuck like glue to radio playlists, when it first came out, radio stations had some concerns. Benny explains: "When it first was released, R&B stations all over America thought I was black. Then they found out I was white and they dropped the record. White radio was afraid to touch it because they thought it was about me dating a 16-year-old girl at my age. So Polydor Records sent out like 3,000 letters to radio stations across the country explaining what the song was really about. And the song got added and almost instantly started playing all over America."

When this song became a hit, Benny Mardones suddenly found himself with a great deal of money and fame, which he didn't handle very well. He developed a cocaine addiction and got in the habit of drinking a bottle of whiskey every night. He recorded the album Too Much To Lose the next year, but when it came time to tour and promote it, he was in Miami, wasted out of his mind. His momentum was stopped cold and his record company, Polydor, lost interest. He continued his descent until 1985, when his son Michael was born and he stopped using drugs. His best friend pulled him together and flew him to Syracuse, where Benny started a new life away from the temptations of Miami. The only white stuff he saw was snow - and plenty of it. Benny became a local celebrity, met various women who helped raise his son (Michael's mom was in worse shape than Benny), and was a big concert draw in the area for the next 10 years.

Here’s an interview where he talks again about how he created the song with Robert Tepper. He also mentions being hurt that he was never invited to sing at various musical gathering events in the ‘80s (Live Aid, We Are The World, etc.). He gets emotional at the end when talking about his life and how he hopes he made a difference with the song. 😢

I loved this song when it came out.

Luckily, I never saw the music video that accompanied it until now. What a creepy, pedo video.