1975 · Behind the Songs
Helen Reddy got there first — then came Barry Manilow and Bat out of Hell.
Some songs arrive with a whole future attached. “Somewhere in the Night” was written by Richard Kerr and Will Jennings, and Helen Reddy released it as a single in December 1975. Her version reached number nineteen on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1976 — a graceful, late-night ballad sung with characteristic warmth.
What makes the song’s story unusual is what happened next: it became one of the decade’s most-covered ballads. Bat out of Hell recorded it, and Barry Manilow cut it for his 1978 album Even Now and released it as a single. Few songs can claim hit versions by such different artists — and Reddy’s was the first of them.
Reddy’s original tends to get lost between those later versions, which is a shame: her reading is the most tender of the set, and it captures something the others don’t — the quiet of the small hours, when the city is still awake but the world has gone soft.