Night and Day

The song opens with a low, insistent repeated-note figure in the accompaniment, like a clock or a dripping tap, before the singer enters. That repeating pulse never really stops; it is the "tom-tom" Porter himself described as the engine of the whole piece.

The melody itself moves mostly by tiny steps and then leaps up dramatically on the words "night and day," landing on a long held note that singers use to show off breath control and tone. Listen for how often the tune returns to nearly the same few pitches, circling back the way the lyric keeps circling back to obsessive thoughts of a loved one.

The middle section lifts into a brighter, more open melodic line, giving both singer and arranger room to stretch out, before the music settles back into the clipped, urgent phrases of the opening idea. In an orchestral pops arrangement, expect a full string sound to swell under the vocal line, with brass or saxophone color filling in the gaps between phrases, and often a jazzy instrumental break where a soloist (piano, trombone, or tap shoes, depending on the arrangement) takes over the tune before the singer returns for a final, sustained payoff on the title phrase.

Cole Porter wrote "Night and Day" for the 1932 Broadway musical "Gay Divorce," where it was introduced by Fred Astaire in one of his final stage roles before he moved to Hollywood. The song's hypnotic, repeated-note accompaniment and its wide-ranging melody made it an immediate hit, and Astaire recorded it that same year. It was carried into the 1934 film version, retitled "The Gay Divorcee," and has since become one of the most recorded songs of the twentieth century, covered by singers and instrumentalists across jazz, pop, and classical crossover traditions. Today it appears regularly on symphony pops programs, arranged for vocalist and orchestra, often as a vehicle for guest singers or instrumentalists to put their own stamp on Porter's tune.