Benny Mardones: Into The Night - His Parole Officer In Hot Pursuit

Question: is it better to be a two-hit wonder, or a one-hit wonder whose one hit happened to have become a hit twice? Second question: is it better when your one hit was about a 16-year-old girl? Let's ask Benny Mardones.

"Into the Night" peaked at #11 in 1980, and then experienced an odd resurgence in 1989, where it peaked at #20. Which is fitting, in a way, as the song has a peculiarly general "80s-ness" that doesn't really tie it either to the early '80s or the late '80s. Congratulations Benny!

But that's not the only unusual aspect of "Into the Night." It sounds like a nice little ballad, until you listen to the lyrics:

She's just 16 years old
Leave her alone, they said
Separated by fools
Who don't know what love is yet

Uh ... Benny? Are you talking about what I think you're talking about? Actually, I think you really don't know what love is yet. And when "they" tell you to leave her alone, you might want to listen to them. I mean, if that was really the sort of thing he was into, someone should have hooked him up with Annabella from Bow Wow Wow.



Some choice YouTube comments:

I like how he's trying to score a 16-year old chick with a wedding band on his finger! That's moxie!

This Video must of had a $50.25 budget. the .25 cents was for the phone call and the rest went toward the shitty rug

DO NOT GET ON THE MAGIC CARPET WITH MR. TOUCHY

hope he gets used to the stripes

they left out where benny stops and gets gas for the rug,course nowadays they have electric ones, but.....

when the number 2 member in al-quaeda say's leave her alone guess i would be scared off.

My old neighbor used to beat this shit out of his wife and blast the radio to hide the screams. It was always soft rock/elevator music (KOST FM here in LA) and I'll never forget this one particular time he was really laying into her and this song was on the radio and all I could hear was.. "If I could fly..." PINCHE PUTA HIJA DE LA CHINGADAAAA!!! *SMACK SMACK* AHHH!!! "...show you love like you'd never seen...ever seen..."

But, you know, you've got to hand it to him. The piano riffs are so elegant, and the chorus is so sweeping, I'm almost willing to let Benny do whatever the hell he wants to do with 16-year-old girls. As the song fades, our weary ephebophile lets out some rather intense wordless screams; either he really wants to take this girl into the night, or someone is slowly dipping his toes into a vat of acid.