Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)
original song composed by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn; first recorded by Frank Sinatra

"Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night in the Week)", also known as "Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)", is a popular song published in 1944 with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Sammy Cahn.
Background
Although it has been interpreted as referring to the separation of romantic partners during wartime, Cahn said that song actually refers to show business people who are not working on Saturday night.
1945 recordings
Charted versions in 1945 were by Frank Sinatra (recorded November 14, 1944, released by Columbia Records as catalog number 36762), (No. 2 in the charts), Sammy Kaye and His Orchestra (vocal by Nancy Norman) (No. 6), Frankie Carle and His Orchestra (vocal by Phyllis Lynne) (No. 8), Woody Herman and His Orchestra (vocal by Frances Wayne) (No. 15) and by The King Sisters (No. 15).
Other versions
Eydie Gormé – Eydie Gormé, 1957
Frank Sinatra - recorded November 29, 1957 for Capitol Records
Julie London - for her album For the Night People (1966)
Rosemary Clooney - for her album For the Duration (1991)
Barry Manilow - Manilow Sings Sinatra (1998)
Popular culture
Sinatra also sang the song in the short film The All-Star Bond Rally (1945).
“Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)” enters the record as original song composed by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn; first recorded by Frank Sinatra. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Saturday, Night and Loneliest can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Saturday, Night and Loneliest provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7426655. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 1945, 1957 and 1966.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)” 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.