"Nightshift" (The Commodores)

The Commodores' 1985 single "Nightshift" is a touching tribute to recording artists Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, who both passed away in 1984 (Gaye died after being shot in the back by his father; Wilson, who'd suffered a heart attack on stage in 1975, died from pneumonia after nearly a decade in a coma).  
It was one of my favorite songs as a kid.  Admittedly, though, I didn't have a strong emotional connection to the subject matter at the time.  (As I learned more about Gaye and Wilson later in life, the words took on a new resonance.)  But, I liked the sound of the song.  Its celestial synthesizers, rumbling keyboard bass, Latin-tinged beat, and soulful vocals evoked the calm, reverent feeling of nighttime.  I also found its message—that everything was going to be okay, even in the midst of grief and loss—to be really soothing.  
In fact, I listened to the song quite a bit to help make sense of things after my great-grandmother passed in 1986.
My favorite parts of the song (then and now) are the bridges leading from the first and second verses into the choruses: the key changes, the drums kick in, and an angelic synth choir rises in a soft, blue mist behind Walter Orange and J.D. Nicholas's lead vocals.  I've always thought it was a clever bit of songwriting/arranging to have the rhythm and key shift in tandem with the emotional shift in the lyrics.  On the verses, they're singing about remembrance and loss; on the bridges, however, they're singing about the musical legacies of Gaye and Wilson and how each will live on through the music.  It's subtle, but it reflects movement from grief to acceptance.
It's one of the few true soul songs of the 1980s and one of the most sincere tribute songs ever written.