In the movie version of
Grease, Travolta and Newton-John played the lead roles of Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson. The song's genesis stems from a summertime love affair between Danny and Sandy, which had ended upon Sandy's revelation that she was moving back to Australia with her family; however, Sandy soon learns that her family is staying in the United States and subsequently enrolls at Rydell High School, where Danny is also a student. In the original stage version, Sandy Dumbrowski, who like many other characters in the play is a Catholic of Polish descent, originally attends parochial school. On the other hand, Danny lied to her and claimed to attend
Lake Forest Academy, a prestigious real-life private school in Chicago. Sandy's parents' decision to pull her out of Catholic school and put her in public Rydell High exposes Danny's subterfuge. It quickly becomes clear that there are unresolved feelings of love between Danny and Sandy. Separately and unknown to each other, both Danny and Sandy meet with their respective group of friends and share their perspectives of their summertime fling. Danny, the leader of a greaser gang known as "The T-Birds" (the "Burger Palace Boys" in the stage show), brags about the physical aspects of the relationship; Sandy remarks to the schoolgirl clique "The Pink Ladies" about her emotional attachment to Danny. The resulting conversations are played out through the song. Of the cast members, only Travolta and Newton-John provided vocals for the previous single from the soundtrack, "
You're The One That I Want", but other members of the cast contributed backing and cameo lead vocals to "Summer Nights". The only vocal contributions on the soundtrack from
Kelly Ward (Putzie) and
Michael Tucci (Sonny) are their single questions in this song (Sonny also had no solo lines in the musical; the two songs from the musical by Putzie's stage counterpart were cut from the film).
Stockard Channing (Rizzo)'s solo line "'Cause he sounds like a drag"— a
bowdlerization of the
likely slur used in the original Chicago version—was spoken rather than sung. "Summer Nights" was originally written for the stage show's transition to Broadway. The original Chicago version of the musical (staged only once since the 1970s) had a different song, "Foster Beach," at that point.
Record World said "The effect is era-perfect and its unique sound should drive it up summer playlists." ==Chart performance==