What song did McDonald's Mac Tonight advertisements adapt for their 1980s campaign?

McDonald's Mac Tonight advertisements adapted the song “Mack the Knife.”

The campaign used a rewritten version of the song to promote evening dining at McDonald's. The advertisements paired the familiar melody with the moon-headed Mac Tonight character, who appeared as a sunglasses-wearing singer at a piano.

“Mack the Knife” is associated with the German song “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer,” written for Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's 1928 theatrical work The Threepenny Opera. The song later became a major popular-music standard, especially through recordings such as Bobby Darin's 1959 hit version.

The McDonald's adaptation is often remembered simply as a moon-themed jingle, but its musical source was an established standard rather than an original song created for the restaurant. The campaign's branding worked by combining that recognizable melody with a new character and a late-night message.