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Midnight at the Oasis
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"Midnight at the Oasis" is a 1973 rock song which was performed by singer Maria Muldaur and was her best known hit, peaking at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100. Written by David Nichtern, the would-be naughty song is a treasing offer of a desert love affair, in a setting which owes more to Rudolph Valentino sheik movies than to real middle eastern deserts.
Allmusic reviewer Matthew Greenwald describes the song as "so sensual and evocative that it was probably one of the most replayed records of the era and also may be responsible for the most pregnancies from a record during the mid-'70s".
Some of the lyrics are mildly suggestive (i.e., "let's slip off to a sand dune ...
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Encyclopedia
"Midnight at the Oasis" is a 1973 rock song which was performed by singer Maria Muldaur and was her best known hit, peaking at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100. Written by David Nichtern, the would-be naughty song is a treasing offer of a desert love affair, in a setting which owes more to Rudolph Valentino sheik movies than to real middle eastern deserts.
Allmusic reviewer Matthew Greenwald describes the song as "so sensual and evocative that it was probably one of the most replayed records of the era and also may be responsible for the most pregnancies from a record during the mid-'70s".
Some of the lyrics are mildly suggestive (i.e., "let's slip off to a sand dune ... and kick up a little dust"), but not sexually explicit.
"Midnight" features an instrumental bridge (also by Nichtern), which is particularly memorable for the guitar work of Amos Garrett.
The lyric "Cactus is our friend..." is used several times in the song. The droll reference suggests an ersatz Hollywood "oasis", since cacti are New World plants native to North America, South America, and the West Indies; they are not found on the Arabian Peninsula naturally.
Covers
- in 1975 a cover version of "Midnight at the Oasis" appeared on the album Dust Yourself Off by the funk band Pleasure.
- In 1978, Betty Wright released Betty Wright Live, which included a live recording of her #5 hit "Clean Up Woman". The version on the album is a medley that includes bits from "Clean Up Woman", "Pillow Talk", "You Got the Love", "Mr. Medley", "Midnight at the Oasis", "Me and Mrs. Jones", "You Are My Sunshine", and "Let's Get Married Today".
- In recent years, versions of this song have also been recorded by the group Brand New Heavies, which reached #13 in the UK in 1994, and by singer/actress Renee Olstead.
- Actress and Broadway singer Valarie Pettiford of UPN's Half & Half remade the song on her album Hear My Soul, released on August 31, 2004.
In the media
- It was performed in American Pie at the Prom.
- In the short lived Jenny McCarthy Show on MTV an entire skit revolved around people buried up to their necks like a garden of human lettuce heads being forced to sing this song on command by their deranged captor.
- The song is sung by the lounge act at the hotel in Sophia Coppola's film Lost in Translation.
- In Christopher Guest's 1997 film Waiting For Guffman, the characters Ron (Fred Willard) and Sheila (Catherine O'Hara) audition for the play Red, White and Blaine with a comically inept performance of the song.
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