Songfacts®:

• "Nightcall" is a haunting song by the French electro-pop artist Kavinsky. In the verses, he drives to see his girl so he can tell her "something you don't want to hear." She provides the chorus:
  
  There's something inside you
  It's hard to explain
  They're talking about you boy
  But you're still the same
  
  Kavinsky's music is more about storytelling than dancing, inspired by the (mostly American) movies he grew up watching, including '80s favorites like E.T. and Back To The Future. He also watched some zombie movies, which gave him the idea for "Nightcall."
  
  As Kavinsky explained when he did press for his OutRun album in 2013, the guy in the song died after crashing his Ferrari and is reanimated as a zombie. He goes to visit his girlfriend, perhaps hoping to turn her into a zombie as well.
• "Nightcall" was Kavinsky's first single. It was released in 2010 but didn't get much attention until 2011, when it was used in the opening scene of the movie Drive, starring Ryan Gosling. The song went to #10 in France and earned Kavinsky a lot of fans in the world of electronic music.
• Kavinsky's real name is Vincent Belorgey. "Kavinsky" he considers a character that can, say, turn into a zombie for a song.
• Kavinsky wrote and produced the song with Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk. The got to know each other years earlier when they were both in the ambit of French electronica.
• Around this time, French acts like Phoenix and M83 were breaking through in America with English-lyric songs that sounded very American. It looked like Kavinsky could have made an impact there as well, but he didn't have much interest, playing just a few shows in that country and doing limited promotion.
• The female vocals are by the Brazilian singer Lovefoxxx.
• Kavinsky takes his time making music. "Nightcall" didn't show up on an album until he released his debut, OutRun (named after a Sega video game), in 2013, three years after the song was issued as a single. For OutRun, he crafted a whole storyline that integrated "Nightcall" among the songs. He considers the song "Zenith" a sequel. In that one, he sings:
  
  We once were electric
  Now we're flatlined
  We're running too late and
  Running out of time
  
  Kavinsky's next album, Reborn, didn't arrive until 2022.
• The British pop band London Grammar released a transformative cover of "Nightcall" in 2013 that went to #53 in the UK. Their version is piano-based with lead singer Hannah Reid doing all the lead vocals so it's no longer a duet. This alters the meaning, with the whole song now coming from the same perspective.
• Kavinsky performed this song at the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics in 2024 with the Belgian singer Angèle doing the female vocals. Most broadcasters from countries outside of France had no idea who he was, so Kavinsky and Angèle weren't identified. Many viewers took to Shazam to figure it out - so many that it set a record for the most-Shazamed song in a single day.
• Kavinsky was found dead at his Paris home on July 28, 2026. He was 50 years old.