But then things moved incredibly quickly. They literally performed for their passage back to England, paying for their fares by singing on the deck of the Sitmar Line’s Fairsky steamship and arriving in February 1967. ![]() There was an incubation period of four years from the first single released in Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb’s adopted home in Australia (1963’s “The Battle of the Blue and the Grey”) to their international arrival. International Year Zero, 1967 New York Mining Disaster 1941 But this primer, overflowing with classics, sets out just some of the unforgettable music they made during a near-35-year chart heyday. Decades on from their first international success, this look at the best Bee Gees songs is a jumping-off point to a songbook that could easily stand a second list of 20, and a third, and so on. Quite simply, the brothers Gibb are up there with the greatest groups, and songwriting partnerships, of all time. The trio have spanned successive pop generations and not only survived major genre shifts, but helped create them, influencing artists and making hits for countless others as well as for themselves. That’s before you even start counting the scores of career-shaping hits they wrote for other artists. The second time, it was with the unstoppable power of a song catalog that brought the Bee Gees career sales estimated at over 220 million records. The Bee Gees were one of the first white groups to explore that territory.įormer Fugees singer Pras sampled this on his song “Blue Angels.The first time the Gibb family went around the world, it was from the Isle of Man to Manchester to Australia. This was an R&B track that did very well in the black charts in America. The set became the best-selling soundtrack album of all time, until it was outsold by The Bodyguard soundtrack. Along with “You Should Be Dancing,” it was one of two previously released Bee Gees songs used – they wrote five more specifically for the film. The plan worked: the song was added to playlists and revived the fortunes of the group.Īlong with several other Bee Gees hits, this was featured on the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever in 1977. Knowing that a new Bee Gees single would be met with skepticism by radio programmers, their label sent promotional singles to stations with plain, white labels, giving no indication as to what the name of the song was, or who it was by. They were very successful as contemporary singers in the late ’60s and early ’70s, but the two albums they released before Main Course flopped, and it looked like their careers were over. ![]() They would often point out that disco became homogenized in the years after they got to it, and that their sound was really an extension of R&B. This criticism would weigh on them in later years as they felt that accusations of selling out and creating popular schlock were out of line. ![]() The group, which had considerable success before the disco era, took a lot of heat in the press. They had seven more #1 hits in the disco era, but the band went out of style at the same time as white leisure suits. We finished the song at the Criteria studios that day.” Some tar noises made a rhythmic sound on the wheels of our car, which created the feel to the type of song we wanted to write. We had the idea as we passed over a bridge. Robin Gibb explained to The Mail On Sunday November 1, 2009: “We’d already thought up the title for this song, but it wasn’t until Barry, Maurice and I drove from Biscayne Bay to Miami that we realized what the tune was going to be. The rhythm was inspired by the chunka-chunka-chunka sound of a car rolling over a bridge crossing Biscayne Bay near Miami. ![]() This was called “Drive Talking” in its early stages, but producer Arif Mardin suggested the change to “jive” to play to teenage sensibilities. They have sold more than 220 million records worldwide, making them one of the world’s best-selling artists of all time The Bee Gees had an incredible 9 Number 1 hits, 15 Top Ten hits, and 43 songs in the Billboard 100. This song peaked at #1 in the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, 5 in the UK, and #4 in New Zealand in 1975. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing them blare out of the radio at that time. They became icons of the era, singing in falsetto harmonies over dance beats. This was the first big disco hit for The Bee Gees. This song started it all for the disco era Bee Gees. Jive Talkin’ has a strong R&B feel to it. The rhythm of this song drew me in when I was younger.
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