Sunglasses at Night

Corey Hart's stratospheric song

This song is so catchy and so 80s I love it to pieces. But how the heck did the idea of sunglasses at night come about?

According to co-producer Phil Chapman, the recording sessions for the album took place in a studio whose air conditioning/heating vents were directly above the mixing console. Air from the vents blew directly into the faces of the control room personnel, so they often wore sunglasses to protect their eyes. Hart, working on a new song, began to improvise lyrics that included the line "I wear my sunglasses at night."

However, Corey tells a different story.

Sunglasses At Night was not yet written but the idea had already begun a subterranean journey through my creative subconscious. It rained almost every day I was in the UK for those sessions. I had a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses with me but I never had the chance to use them.

Later that summer my album was delivered to Aquarius-Capitol Records. Everyone seemed very pleased with the results. I was kinda like a writing magnet in those days so the song ideas kept flowing even though we were done with the recording. I started messing around with a melodic line and phrase called 'My Cigarette Got Wet.' It is an ironic lyric because I have never smoked in my life. It was the nascent embryo of 'Sunglasses' although I didn't realize it. I actually recorded a demo for 'Wet' which had many musical elements of 'Sunglasses' but I wasn't really sold on the song.

One night I went back to the 'Wet' demo and sang out the lines 'I Wear My Sunglasses At Night' over the melody. Wow. Just like that the song was born. It now spirited a cooler cadence from the new lyric that was missing before, plus I changed a few chord progressions. I wanted to add it to my album on the spot. Impossible, I thought, we'd already spent the full recording budget. But I will call the label first thing in the morning anyway and plead my case.

To their credit and intuition, Aquarius Records sent me back to England. They trusted me when I told them, 'I think this one is really good.' My Producers in London, Phil Chapman and Jon Astley, brought out the best in the song. They brilliantly produced the track highlighting the hip sounds and styles exploding out of the UK music scene during that prolific period in the early '80s.

The song is certainly memorable between the synth beat and the powerful chorus. It quickly jumped into rotation at MTV, which broke it stateside. This was the first video to win a Juno award in 1984. And a star was born.

(I’m sure all Corey’s tossing and turning in bed here with his shirt wide open was the sexual awaking of many a young person.)

According to wiki, here’s the story.

The music video, directed by Rob Quartly, shot at the Don Jail in Toronto, reflects the vision of a "fashion" police state, with scenes of Hart in a prison cell, without sunglasses, being strong-armed by police officers and paraded past various citizens wearing their regulation shades. Near the end of the video, Hart is taken to the office of a female police officer (who releases Hart in the song's end), played by Laurie Brown, who later became the host of The NewMusic as well as a VJ on MuchMusic. This video uses the shorter single version instead of the longer album version.

In 2014 he played around with an acoustic version, which creates a moody ballad of the song. You can hear it here.

In 2020, a remake of the song was done by BFRND for the Balenciaga fashion line with Hart’s blessing. He talked about the impact of the song to Vogue in this article, which also includes the fashion video for the remake.

Whichever version, enjoy your song of the day!