Summer Nights (from Grease) by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John

In 2007, NBC produced the reality television series, “Grease: You’re The One That I Want” to pick the two leads of a Broadway revival of Grease. The show a moderate success and a incredible promotion tool for the revival which had enormous ticket sales. Now, I actually never watched this show, but I’ll never forget this music video that was produced to promote the show.



This “medley” of songs from Grease stared Device van Outen one of the co-host of the NBC show. When I first saw this video on television, it just left me speechless. The medley is put together in a rather unorthodox way splicing different songs together, leading off with “Sandra Dee” one of the less well-known songs from the show. However, what most people were thinking about when they watched this video were the girls in black lingerie doing a not-so-subtle striptease dance.

After I saw this video on television I went to the official show website where it was posted and sent the link to a couple of friends. A couple days I noticed that the video was no longer on the website. Apparently, people complained and thought that this was an inappropriate way to promote a family-orientated television show about casting a family-orientated Broadway show.

I got to agree here, some of the moves on the chairs are a little racy and if NBC really wanted “Grease: You’re The One That I Want” to be a family show, this was a little much. The ironic thing is that the originators of Grease never intended to be a family show.

Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s 1972 musical, Grease was a show filled with expletives including a line when Sandy says “f--- it” to Danny when he asks if she is still mad at him. The original show more openly dealt the issues of teenage sexuality including Sandy’s abstinence, Rizzo’s promiscuity and the differences between the way that males and females view sexuality.

Then in 1978, Randal Kleiser directed the film version of the musical, which cleaned up the language in the musical and dealt with the sexuality of the show in a more subtle and light-hearted way. The film, which is the highest grossing musical of all time has become so popular that revivals of the Broadway show take more after the film then the original stage production. Like most people, the film version of Grease is the one that I know and love.

What makes Grease great goes beyond whether or not there are swear words used in the musical or even the way that sexuality the story deals with sexuality. Grease displays synergy between the music and plot that develops the characters and expresses the emotions in a real and convincing way.

And honestly who doesn’t love “Summer Nights.”

What a way to start a musical. Let’s have the two main characters reminisces about their summer romance but at the same time set across the school from each other. A lesser musical would have had the Sandy and Danny sing separate songs but in Grease they sing about their romance as a duet juxtaposing not only their own perspectives on the romance but the viewpoint of their friends.

The song starts out as Danny responds to his friend questions about his summer romance. Danny boasts while Sandy sheepishly recalls how it felt. The first verse builds to a chorus as Danny and Sandy innocently sing “summer days drifting away to oh, oh those summer nights.”

I clearly remember laughing out loud the first time I watched this film when I was a kid when the boys abruptly enter prodding for details. What’s even better is how the girls are just as nosy as the boys are. This song plays to the stereotypes that guys are more interested in things like “Did you get very far?” while the girls are interested in the romance, “Was it love at first site?” “Summer Nights” doesn’t so much perpetuate stereotypes as much as the song provides insight by comparing the ideas we have about the way girls and boys view sexually.

The form of “Summer Nights” is very simple, the duet builds to a chorus and then the response from the back-ground singers. This is repeated four times without a bridge. You don’t really notice the repetitive nature of the from because of the evolving background vocals which are a throw back to the doo-wop music of the late 1950s.

As the song builds Danny and Sandy provide more details because of the prodding of their friends. Danny gets more explicit, “well she was good, you know what I mean” while Sandy swoons “He got friendly, holdin’ my hand.” Danny’s bragging comes off more as funny then chauvinistic because he’s singing the same melody with Sandy in the same joyful musical space.

In researching “Summer Nights” I found this parody title “Ghetto Nights.”

What struck me about this version is that is still has the same warm-fuzzy teenage romance feeling at the end of the song.

There is something pure and joyful about Grease. The original Broadway show had it, the film had it, the over-sexualized promotion video had and the ghettoized version had it. It’s that feeling of summer nights, falling in love and a simpler time in our lives which is why we keep coming back to Grease.