The Moody Blues proved to be an extremely resilient act over the years. Several times during their career, they managed to change up their styles and find new audience factions. They managed these shifts while holding onto their previous fans.
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They squeezed out one last hit at the end of the 80s, their last Top 40 song in America. It came with a song that essentially served as a sequel of sorts to their big comeback hit in the 1980s.
Moodies on the Move
The Moody Blues found out quickly that it was best to transform rather than get left behind. They had formed as an R&B-beholden British Invasion act, as evidenced by their breakout hit “Go Now”. But that version of the band quickly imploded when the hits dried up.
Instead of folding their tents, they added guitarist Justin Hayward and bassist John Lodge. Both men could write and sing. That essentially gave them five writers, as keyboardist Mike Pinder, flautist Ray Thomas, and drummer Graeme Edge also contributed in that department.
Encouraged by their record company, the band attempted a new hybrid of typical pop-rock song structures and classical music flourishes. Their 1967 album Days Of Future Passed introduced this new sound, eventually spun off a huge hit in “Nights In White Satin”, and set the Moodies on a lucrative path for the next decade or so.
Strings to Synths
As the 80s dawned, the band realized that their old ways of doing things wouldn’t fly, at least in terms of gaining them radio exposure. They pivoted to more of a synthesizer-based sound. And it paid off in a pair of Top 20 singles from their 1981 album Long Distance Voyager.
For the 1986 album The Other Side Of Life, Justin Hayward wrote a song called “Your Wildest Dreams”. He thought the subject matter was a bit too retro for modern audiences. But producer Tony Visconti helped burnish the track into a gorgeous pop confection, and it made it to the Top 10.
The chart success was a revelation for the band, especially for Hayward. He realized that he had a few more songs in the hopper in a similar vein. If “Your Wildest Dreams” worked so well, why wouldn’t one of those? So he dusted one off and brought it to the sessions for the band’s 1988 album Sur La Mer.
“Somewhere” Special
“I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” picked up on a lot of the same themes that “Your Wildest Dreams” had first delivered. The song is an inspiring treatise on the power of love to endure generations of absence. Visconti once again added his touch. Even the tempo is the same as the notably similar song.
To top it all off, The Moody Blues used the similarity between the two to create a video that acted as a sequel to “Your Wildest Dreams”, which had ended on a cliffhanger. Buoyed by all that, “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” eked its way to No. 40 on the US pop charts.
By the time the band returned with their next new album, Keys To The Kingdom, in 1991, the grunge era had started to take over the rock scene. That was a move the Moodies weren’t prepared to make. “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” would have to suffice as the last Top 40 song of their career.
Photo by Andre Csillag/Shutterstock
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