"Midnight Blue" is a title of a Top Ten hit single by Melissa Manchester that was taken from her 1975 album Melissa: Billboard magazine described the song as "a classically elegant quiet ballad about a pair of longtime lovers putting aside their aggravations until the dawn in order to try making it one more time in memory of all their old times together."

The song had been written by Manchester in 1973 as her first collaboration with Carole Bayer Sager, who would be Manchester's regular lyricist over the next five years; Manchester would recall: "the songs that I wrote with Carole...all came out of conversations. Therefore the tone of the songs was very conversational. The listener always feels like they are in the moment when that first line is uttered." According to Manchester the genesis of "Midnight Blue" was a conversation she and Bayer Sager "had about our young husbands, and how as young women we didn't know how to get through the hard times that every relationship has"; the song was essentially finished but still lacking a title when either Manchester or Bayer Sager said: "Midnight Blue" which Manchester opines "was the perfect fit for the [song's] overall feeling".

After meeting Manchester backstage after Bette Midler's Carnegie Hall concert of 23 June 1972 Bayer Sager suggested she and Manchester write a song to cut as a demo, the result being "Midnight Blue".

Although Manchester's first two album releases, Home to Myself and Bright Eyes in respectively 1973 and 1974, would overall feature eight songs she had co-written with Bayer Sager, Manchester herself would not record "Midnight Blue" until 1975. The demo of "Midnight Blue" was submitted by Sager and Manchester to producer Vini Poncia in hopes of having his purported client Dionne Warwick record the song: instead the demo convinced Poncia to record the singer of the demo who was Manchester herself. Poncia waited for almost two years - allowing Manchester to fulfill her obligations to the producers of her two Bell Records albums — before approaching Manchester with regard to producing her.

In the interim Manchester had personally pitched "Midnight Blue" to Dusty Springfield according to Springfield's friend Sue Cameron who recalls Manchester visiting Springfield's Laurel Canyon home and playing Springfield the demo of "Midnight Blue" - Cameron (quote): "She told Melissa no. Melissa leaves the house. I went: 'Are you crazy?'"

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