"Nights in White Satin" is a 1967 single by The Moody Blues, written and composed by Justin Hayward and first featured on the album Days of Future Passed. When first released in 1967, the song reached #19 on theUK Singles Chart. It was the first significant chart entry by the band since "Go Now" and the recent lineup change.
It charted at #2 in November 1972 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on Cash Box in the United States, earning a Gold certification for sales of a million copies. It also reached #1 in Canada. In the wake of its U.S. success, the song re-charted in the UK in late 1972 and climbed to #9. The song was re-released yet again in 1979, and charted for a third time in the UK at #14.
Band member Justin Hayward wrote and composed the song at age 19 in Swindon, and titled the song after a girlfriend gave him a gift of satin bedsheets. The song itself was a tale of a yearning love from afar, which leads many aficionados to term it as a tale of unrequited love endured by Hayward.
The London Festival Orchestra provided the orchestral accompaniment for the introduction, the final rendition of the chorus, and the "final lament" section, all of which were in the original album version. The "orchestral" sounds in the main body of the song were actually produced by Mike Pinder's Mellotron keyboard device, which would come to define the "Moody Blues sound"
The song is written in the key of E minor and features the Neapolitan chord (F).