A Night to Remember

Nidra Beard, Dana Meyers and Charmaine Sylvers wrote "A Night to Remember"; one search snippet also credits Leon Sylvers III, which we could not confirm. Sylvers produced it, Dick Griffey was executive producer, and Jody Watley and Howard Hewett sang lead. It is the second single from Friends, with "On Top of the World" on the B-side, released in February 1982. Session Days lists James Ingram on bass and keyboards, Ed Greene on drums, Earnest Reed and Ricky Sylvers on guitar, Joey Gallo on keyboards and Jeffrey Daniel on backing vocals. It reached 5 in the UK, 9 in Ireland, 8 on the US soul chart, 15 on the dance chart and 44 on the Hot 100, and went silver in the UK. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone, in a list of the 100 best songs of 1982, wrote that it topped them all, as Wikipedia reports it.

On Top of the Pops, as Daniel told Mixmag, Watley was pregnant when the BBC wanted the group, so SOLAR sent him to the UK to dance rather than sing; he performed a solo routine and was invited back. He called the move the backslide, and recalled that Michael Jackson called it the moonwalk, though it's not walking, you're sliding. Wikipedia dates the appearance to June 1982. Daniel later co-choreographed the Bad and Smooth Criminal videos.

911 covered it in 1996 (UK 38) and Liberty X in 2005 as the official Children in Need single (UK 6, Ireland 19). Setlist.fm lists 40 performances, the most played Shalamar song on its page, ahead of "Make That Move" (33) and "The Second Time Around" (32). We could not tie our upload to the album, 12-inch or a live version.