This was written by Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith that was first released in 1978 as a single from the Patti Smith Group album "Easter".

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band recorded "Because the Night" at Atlantic Studios, New York on June 1, 1977, the first day of sessions for Darkness on the Edge of Town, though the lyrics only consisted of the song title and some mumbling. Springsteen struggled with the song almost four months until his engineer, Jimmy Iovine, got involved. At the time, Iovine was also producing the album "Easter" for Patti Smith at the Record Plant, New York, where "Darkness" was being recorded at the same time. As The Boss was struggling to finish this song, he agreed to Jimmy Iovine's request that Patti Smith could complete it. Springsteen explained why to Mojo magazine August 2010:

"It was a love song and I really wasn't writing them at the time. I wrote these very hidden love songs like For You, or Sandy, maybe even Thunder Road, but they were always coming from a different angle. My love songs were never straight out, they weren't direct. That song needed directness and at the time I was uncomfortable with it. I was hunkered down in my samurai position. Darkness… was about stripping away everything - relationships, everything - and getting down to the core of who you were. So that song is the great missing song from Darkness On The Edge. I could not have finished it as good as she did. She was in the midst of her love affair with Fred 'Sonic' Smith and she had it all right there on her sleeve. She put it down in a way that was just quite wonderful."

Smith was hesitant to use a song written by someone else, and even after writing the verses she wasn't sure she would record it. Jimmy Iovine and her band members helped convince her to give it a go. "In the end, we were a good match for that particular song," she told Billboard. "I could have never written a song like that. I'd never write a chorus like that."

Smith wrote the verses in one night in 1977 while waiting for her boyfriend, Fred "Sonic" Smith, to call. Fred, a founding member of the MC5, lived in Michigan and performed with his band Sonic's Rendezvous; Patti was in New York. They relied on phone calls to stay in touch, but they were both poor and long distance calls were very expensive, so they limited their talks to about once a week, always at night when the rates were cheaper. One night, Patti was expecting his call at 7:30, but it didn't come. That's when she played Springsteen's cassette demo for the first time, listening to it over and over while she wrote lyrics about her yearning love. She got rather specific:

"Love is a ring, a telephone"

By the time Fred called around midnight, the song was done. This was very unusual for her, as she typically took a lot longer to compose lyrics.

I can hear why!