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Goodnight Girl

1991 single by Wet Wet Wet

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ5583516
Source-derived summary

"Goodnight Girl" is the third single from Scottish band Wet Wet Wet's fourth studio album, High on the Happy Side (1992). It was released on 23 December 1991 by label The Precious Organisation and was the second of the band's three UK number-one singles (the first being a cover of the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends"), but the only one to be self-penned. Writer Graeme Clark was inspired to write the song for his then girlfriend, but has never publicly named her.

A string-laden ballad, "Goodnight Girl" spent four weeks at number one on the UK Singles Chart in January 1992, representing a turnaround in fortunes for the band, with the first two singles from High on the Happy Side having peaked at numbers 37 and 56 respectively. It also gave Wet Wet Wet their third Irish number-one single (after "With a Little Help from My Friends" and "Sweet Surrender") and reached the top 10 in Belgium and the Netherlands. Marti Pellow recorded his own version of the song for inclusion on his 2002 album Marti Pellow Sings the Hits of Wet Wet Wet & Smile.

Editorial summary

“Goodnight Girl” enters the record as 1991 single by Wet Wet Wet. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Goodnight, Girl and single can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1992, 1991, 2002—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1991-12-23. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Goodnight, Girl and single.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Goodnight Girl” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Goodnight, Girl and single provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5583516. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 1991 and 2002.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Goodnight Girl”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Goodnight Girl primary sources, Goodnight Girl archive and Goodnight research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Goodnight Girl” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.