It’s hard to imagine a more classic song than Bob Seger’s “Night Moves.”
And on this date in 1976, he released his ninth-career studio album, of the same name.
The iconic title track actually took him six months to write, and it was based on a relationship he had as a teenager back in the ’60s. He’d started to hang with a rougher crowd, and eventually met a dark-haired, Italian girl he fell in love with almost immediately.
Unfortunately for him, she was in a relationship with a man in the military who was subsequently away for a period of time. When her actual boyfriend returned home, the girl decided to marry him and Bob was left brokenhearted. I mean hey, at least he got a pretty damn good song out of it… I guess.
The track peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in March of 1977.
And of course, with such a classic, timeless, song and Bob’s influence as a songwriter and musician to a lot of today’s country artists, there are plenty of covers from throughout the years. Some are decent, some are horrible, and some are pretty damn good.
Though no one can touch the original, let’s take a look at some of the best covers in honor of the anniversary:
Kip Moore did a cool mashup of the song along with Garth Brooks’ “That Summer” back in 2013. I’d kill to get a real studio version on him singing the whole thing one day:
Luke Combs’ rockin’ version:
Eric Church did it as a part of a medley:
Justin Moore’s twangy version:
And this one here might just be the holy grail of covers of this song… only Travis Tritt could do a kickass version like this:
Lastly, of course, the one and only original:
