Grooving In After The Definitive Collection: This Is Where I Came In

The Good: Good vocals, Decent music, Some excellent lyrics
The Bad: Musically unimaginative and derivative
The Basics: A good album and certainly better than the pop-rock tracks that were dominating the charts when this was released, This Is Where I Came In illustrates BeeGees can still write.


New to the best-of collection from The Bee Gees at the time was the track This Is Where I Came In, which I enjoyed; I thought it illustrated that the Bee Gees could still make music that was decent, intriguing and of a high quality. So, when I stumbled upon the 2001 album This Is Where I Came In, I found myself intrigued enough to pick it up and give it a spin.

This Is Where I Came In is a powerful argument against Top 40 music being dominated by the buying power of 12 - 24 year-olds. This Is Where I Came In is a solid musical album and when it was released, it never came close to performing (outside the Adult Contemporary market) in the U.S. as the preoccupation of pop-rock at the time was such legendary acts as Crazy Town, Joe and Mystikal, Nickleback and Ja Rule. This album knocks out the albums that the pop hits of late 2001 and early 2002 were on as far as quality and it's a shame that it will likely be one of the last footnotes in the fading career of the Bee Gees.

This is not to say that I'm a huge fan of the group (this is only the second album I've heard of theirs), but This Is Where I Came In is like discovering a lost sampler of 80's music that one has never heard before. It is solid in a lot of ways, save that each and every track sounds like another artist's works. So, for example, "She Keeps On Coming" sounds JUST like a Robert Palmer song. Even the title track, is funkier than one might expect the Bee Gees and while the vocals are reminiscent of the artists, the instrumentals sound more like The Eagles. "Man In The Middle" reminded me of the classic "Don't Bring Me Down."

The serious drawback of This Is Where I Came In either does not sound like the Bee Gees or that the band has evolved so far beyond their prior works that all that it shares with the prior decades' worth of work are the members of the band and their vocal quality and lyrical ability. Because all of these tracks sound like other artists' works, there is nothing musically ambitious or surprising on this album. In fact, this might be the most tame and least experimental Bee Gees album yet. They do not push the envelope, as they used to do. Fortunately, as they do not venture into pointless rapping and thug attitudes, the do not simply embody the music of the time, either.

With twelve tracks clocking in at just over 52 minutes, This Is Where I Came In is a solid pop-rock album that exists as a creation of the brothers Gibb: Barry, Robin and Maurice. They wrote or co-wrote all twelve tracks (mostly together) and their vocals are what one might expect from the Bee Gees, without the falsettos (there are none on this album!). The trio also produced this album, so there is a strong argument to be made for the idea that this is the creative work almost entirely of the Bee Gees without anyone else pulling the strings.

During the 1980s, which these songs sound like they came from, the Bee Gees survived by writing songs for other artists who were able to chart at the time. Songs like "Islands In The Stream" (Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton's hit duet) were written by the Bee Gees. Here their writing is still strong and it is consistently decent over all twelve tracks. Together, the brothers Gibb write fairly generic rock and roll anthems about rock and roll (This Is Where I Came In), women ("She Keeps On Coming"), dedication ("Deja Vu" and "The Extra Mile") and love ("Sacred Trust" and "Wedding Day").

On their own tracks, though, the Bee Gees create some truly diverse works that are well-written and well-performed. So, for example, when all three artists sing Barry's lines "Some people like to send the world away / Some sunlight on some silver beams / And I'll give you Panavision pictures / 'Cos you give me Technicolor dreams . . ." ("Technicolor Dreams") they create a musical moment that is reminiscent of the scope of some of their classic songs like "Words" or "Tragedy."

Robin Gibb is equally articulate when he writes and sings "Embrace" with the wonderful poetics "Through the mists of time, lovers can be friends / The power of the human heart / The secrets in the soul of men / All my blessings in disguise / I don't know / Reunited we will rise." Robin rivals Barry for the quality of the lyrics on this album and the result of the album is that it is a remarkably well-written endeavor.

Perhaps that is the final stage of the Bee Gees, now that one of the trio is dead; perhaps the writing will carry their legacy for the next few years. The brothers Gibb can write and they can sing, but on This Is Where I Came In they fail to innovate musically in any new direction. It's still worth a listen, but it's a tough sell for owning.

"Man In The Middle" was robbed for attention as it is a truly great track and the strongest on this album. Ironically, it is followed by the weak link, "Deja Vu."

For other works by The Bee Gees, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Best Of Bee Gees
Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
One Night Only
Number Ones
Their Greatest Hits - The Record

6/10

For other music reviews, please visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Time Capsule Of A Great Band The Bee Gees Their Greatest Hits – The Record!

The Good: Wonderful music, Excellent voices, Great lyrics, Duration!
The Bad: One or two weak tracks with inferior lyrics, Barbra Streisand duet
The Basics: An excellent album displaying the lyrics and voice of the Bee Gees, Their Greatest Hits – The Record is a MUST for any fan of the Bee Gees or truly great, enduring music.


The Bee Gees are the band who either defined the music of the 70s, or adapted perfectly to suit it, depending on who you consult. Listening to The Bee Gees Their Greatest Hits The Record, it becomes clear that the band is possibly the ultimate chameleon band. This two c.d. album takes the band from their roots as a Simon and Garfunkel-esque vocal trio to the heavy 70s synth and falsetto sound to the 80s pop sound to our current pop-rock sound.

And it's a wonderful journey.

Opening with the Bee Gees' first major hit, "New York Mining Disaster 1941," the album captures all of the great songs the Bee Gees have had. So, in addition to capturing well the styles of different eras in music and in history, the Bee Gees create a standard for themselves different from their previous "Best of" albums. This album truly has their greatest hits, without much else.

The strength of the album is that it uses hits written by the Bee Gees as covers as well. So for the first time, there are studio recordings of Bee Gees songs "Islands In the Stream" (with lyrics from "Ghetto Supastar" included!), "Heartbreaker, "Immortality," and a version of "Guilty" that has both Barbara Streisand and Barry Gibb. The album is arranged well, using original recordings, not new versions of old songs, not alternate versions, not live versions. Basically, this album is ideal for people who like or love the Bee Gees songs that they've heard and don't want to be bogged down with material they don't know.

I love the duration. This two c.d. set has 71 and 76 minutes of music! It's wonderful to see artists using the full depth of the medium. The liner notes give a good history of the band as well as the recording history for each track.

The strength of the Bee Gees has always been in the lyrics. These men know how to write songs that say something. How rare is it today to find songs that tell stories? Very! There's no way 'New York Mining Disaster 1941" would be a hit in today's pop music clime. And that's not a slam at the Bee Gees; it's to the detriment of society that the most sellable music can't handle storytelling. The songs explore depths of real emotions. Songs like "I've Gotta Get A Message To You" and "How Deep Is Your Love" articulate longing, desire and love the likes of which are almost never found today on the radio. And just plain fun. The Bee Gees do simply, dancing fun on tracks like "You Should Be Dancing" and "Stayin' Alive." And today there could not be a successful eccentric song like "I Started a Joke;" something that is passionate but ellusive.

The success of the Bee Gees - and this album - is how they go from trendsetters to rebels. Their latest tracks continue in a tradition of great lyrics and excellent vocals, but defy what is considered marketable pop rock music. "Alone" makes an impressibe addition to the album - and the truly greatest hits of the Bee Gees - as a lament about how fate works against the singer and how they are tired of being lonely. It works so wonderfully. The actual guitars and true voices impressively displayed on the very latest track, "This Is Where I Came In" are so rare on today's radio; BB Mak is the last group that comes to mind for me to cite that has even made the attempt. The Bee Gees make thee transition from one end of the music spectrum to the other with style and class because they remain consistent in the important regards: lyric writing and music writing.

The Bee Gees are probably the best example of what a group may do when it retains creative control of its material.

The only weakness of the album comes in some of its tracks that don't maintain the standards. This is understandable, even though I'd wish it didn't happen on a Greatest Hits album. The lyrics on "First of May" don't live up. It's a sad day when a group with such sophisticated lyrics as appear in "I Started A Joke" resorts to rhyming "tall" and "small." And as for "Guilty" on the second disc, I take issue with that as I'm not a fan of Babs and I think it's not a true Bee Gee's song; it's a Barry Gibb track. Had they only used "Our Love (Don't Throw All Away)," I would have been a happy camper!

To the strength of the album and the group as a whole, I must say the two weak tracks are both sandwiched in between vastly better tracks. A strong recommendation for anyone who loves great music, especially if they're sick of the garbage on the radio today. And if you have friends who like the stuff that's on the radio but dislike the Bee Gees, be sure to let them know that "Emotion" by Destiny's Child is a Bee Gee's song. It's true and this album is the first recording they've produced of it! :)

Disc one is blown away by the strength of "I Started a Joke," the weakest link is "First of May." Disc two is ruled by "Alone" and the only detrimental track is "Guilty." Regardless, I liked the album enough to give it five stars. Usually, I reserve that solely for perfect albums with absolutely no cons. Here, the cons are so small in the magnitude of the album that they don't detract enough from it to make me skip over them or even notice them as serious detractions when I listen long enough.

For other works by The Bee Gees, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Best Of Bee Gees
Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
One Night Only
Number Ones

10/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Very Much NOT The Best Of Bee Gees: Why This Compilation Underwhelms!

The Good: Decent vocals, Good sound
The Bad: Short, Lacks most of the best songs by The Bee Gees!
The Basics: A very average compilation, Best Of Bee Gees is brought down by the presence of superior compilations on the market.


In a month where I have been panning a number of compilations, it seems fitting for me to nail the old Bee Gees's compilation Best Of Bee Gees to the wall.

For several years, this album, originally released in 1969 was out of print and one has to wonder why the group decided to let Rhino Records put it back in rotation, especially following the amazing release Their Greatest Hits: The Record. Best Of Bee Gees has only two songs which were not a part of that compilation and for those doing the math, 1969 precedes the release of Saturday Night Fever and the whole disco revolution. So, while there are some truly wonderful songs by the Bee Gees on this compilation, arguably many of their best works - both qualitatively and by sales - are not.

With only a dozen songs occupying 37:34, Best Of Bee Gees is an excellent example of the group's creative powers. Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb wrote all of the songs on the album, in various combinations of the three. The Bee Gees provide all of the vocals, they play all of their own instruments and they act as co-producers on the album. This is very much who they were when they wrote these songs.

And while it may seem obvious because the album precedes disco, the group was not a disco or even a dance group in this incarnation. No, these early years of Bee Gees has the group sounding incredibly folk ("New York Mining Disaster 1941") and like typical pop-rock balladeers ("I Started A Joke," "Massachusetts") and yet, many of the tunes still resonate today. This is because the songs have actual melodies (one would bet that virtually everyone could hum the tune to "I've Gotta Get A Message To You" or "To Love Somebody") and the men of Bee Gees can actually sing.

Instrumentally, the album is almost exclusively made up of songs with guitars, bass and drums, though the keyboards begin to exert real influence in later tracks like "To Love Somebody" and "Massachusetts." The songs tend to be quieter ballads and the album becomes somewhat monotonous in that regard. "Words" is a quiet, longing ballad which melds into "I Started A Joke," which is slow and vocally-driven which melts into "First Of May," which has a singsong quality to it. While the men could write and they could create memorable music, they seem to cop out in the middle years these songs are culled from by becoming whispy, acapella singers who do not use their full resonance to sell their songs.

On Best Of Bee Gees it is also easy for listeners to hear the transition between the tenor voices of the band ("New York Mining Disaster 1941") and the falsetto presentations which took them into the 1970s ("First Of May"). But what the Bee Gees do not get nearly enough credit for is how they use their full vocal range. "Words" goes from the lowest Maurice could sing into a falsetto and his range is actually suitably impressive. The Bee Gees, regardless of anything else, were fairly fearless about pushing their own limits and even that is evident on Best Of Bee Gees.

As far as the lyrics go, the Bee Gees are one of the more creative musical acts and lyrically, they have a strong sense of poetics which is undoubtedly why they were able to extend their career in the 1980s to writing material for other artists. The Bee Gees have a great sense of imagery which makes their messages and themes perfectly clear. Indeed, when they sing "Hey! I swallowed each and every lie that you gave to me. / Where lies the man that I was, and the future that could never be? / Tomorrow...every one gonna know me better. / And tomorrow...every one gonna drink my wine. / And...tomorrow...every one gonna read my letter, / and my story of love, and a love that could never be mine" ("Tomorrow, Tomorrow"), it is easy for listeners to relate to the sense of loss and longing.

As well, the Bee Gees have a decent musical storytelling ability. On "Massachusetts," they engage the listener with lines like "Tried to hitch a ride to San Francisco, / Gotta do the things I wanna do. / And the lights all went down in Massachusetts / They brought me back to see my way with you." And through their storysongs, they branch out beyond the usual songs about love and loss that one expects to hear from a pop-rock group. Unfortunately, not all the songs are like that and "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You," for example, ends up as a terribly repetitive song with little lyrical substance.

Why, then, am I so down on Best Of Bee Gees? First, it is dreadfully short and does not use the medium well at all as a result. Second, the three songs on this compilation that are not on Their Greatest Hits: The Record - "I Can't See Nobody," "Tomorrow, Tomorrow," and "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You" - are not the best they have to offer and listeners who buy the other compilation are likely to be much happier with their purchase. Anyone who wants a well-rounded view of the Bee Gees or a great musical lesson would do better to pick up Their Greatest Hits: The Record instead of this.

The best song is "I've Gotta Get A Message To You," the low point is "World."

For other works by The Bee Gees, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
One Night Only
Number Ones

4.5/10

Check out how this album stacks up against other albums and singles by visiting my specialized Music Review Index Page where the reviews are organized from best musical work to worst!

© 2012, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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One Night With The Bee Gees: One Night Only!

The Good: Good mix, Excellent vocals, Good lyrics
The Bad: Some songs truncated, Annoying live effect sounds kept in
The Basics: A good live album that is a good mix of Bee Gees standards and "new" material, One Night Only is wonderful to dance to!


One Night Only was a good idea and I wonder why the Bee Gees did it. Wait, I'm not dissing the Bee Gees, they're great. And the One Night Only special they did was a rockin' time. They did it well. I kid you not, everytime it came on PBS during their pledge drives, I would sit down and watch. Usually, I would get up and dance. It's a wonderful program. I know; I saw it four times. I wonder if the Bee Gees made it explicitly for PBS because if not, they were robbed; PBS got some great use out of it.

The album One Night Only is basically the soundtrack to the television special they did. The plus side is, because it was a good special, it tends to be a good album.

So, on the off chance you've been under a rock the last five decades and don't know who the Bee Gees are, they're an international supergroup who have had hits in all decades since the sixties. In addition, they are the people responsible for many other artist's hits. It was the Bee Gees, for instance, who are responsible for the Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton duet "Islands In the Stream" from the early 80s. One Night Only is kind of a "best of" live album which combines known Bee Gees classics (like "Night Fever," "Jive Talking," and "Stayin' Alive") with Bee Gees live versions of songs they gave to other artists (like "Islands In the Stream" and "Heartbreaker").

The nice thing about the album is that it's the Bee Gees and they're real good. They can sing and the live versions of their songs display their prominent singing voices. The other nice thing about the album is that there are tracks that are heretofore unavailable (and unrecorded) from the Bee Gees, such as their live version of "Grease" and "Guilty."

Easily the shining moment on the album is "Our Love (Don't Throw It All Away)" which features Andy Gibb. The thing is, Andy Gibb is dead. He has been for a while. Usually, I'm not big on exploiting the dead in current art. Like Natalie Cole's song "Unforgetable" where she duets with her dead father. That cheesed me off, it was such a cheap exploitation of him. In this case, I was impressed. The mixing of the live voices and the recorded track of Andy is seamless. The song sounds good, everything comes together on it.

The problem with the album is two fold. Some of the songs have been edited for time. The opening version of "You Should Be Dancing" is severely cut. "Night Fever" and "More Than a Woman" are combined. The other problem is the effects of the live crowd. Some of the songs are distracted by the fact that the sounds of cheering are not only kept in but amplified. For instance, "New York Mining Disaster 1941," an otherwise well-written, sad song has cheering at points in it. It's understandable that the crowd would be excited hearing it, but it's inappropriate to have cheers in this song. There is something taken away in this soundtrack by not seeing it.

While the c.d. is good, I'd recommend the actual program over it any day. I would rate it higher, too. The strongest link is "Our Love (Don't Throw It All Away)" and the weak link is the severely edited "Nights On Broadway."

For other classic artists, please check out my reviews of:
Jump Back: The Best Of The Rolling Stones 1971 – 1993 - The Rolling Stones
Break Every Rule - Tina Turner
20 Great Years - Kenny Rogers

6.5/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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Why Settle For Chuck When You Can Have Steak? The Bee Gees Number Ones.

The Good: Great songs, Good duration
The Bad: There's a better compilation with all but one of these songs.
The Basics: Unsatisfying to fans of The Bee Gees, Number Ones is less than an earlier, better compilation!


I hate to see musical artists exploiting their works in cheap ways. I’m sorry, There's truly no other way to call it sometimes, though. When Elvis charted recently with his album #1 Hits other bands and performers whose best days on the charts were behind them started doing the same. With The Bee Gees, the album they released was Number Ones. My discontent with this album comes from a very simple and honest place. I have a great love of their compilation album Their Greatest Hits: The Record which preceded Number Ones. Sadly, Number Ones is not so ambitious, and includes far less material than their more impressive compilation. In fact, the only conceivable reasons for wanting Number Ones over Their Greatest Hits: The Record is because one either does not want two discs or because they do want the song “Man In The Middle,” which is not on the earlier compilation. That is not sufficient reason as far as I am concerned.

For those unfamiliar with the Bee Gees, they were a pop-rock trio which exploded into prominence in the late 1960s, dominated the popular music scene (especially disco with the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack) in the 1970s, relied on their songwriting skills to survive the 1980s and saw a popular adult contemporary resurgence in the 1990s. They are one of the most (surprisingly) versatile bands and Number Ones does a decent job of illustrating how their popular musical hooks and catchy lyrics allowed them to ascend the charts for so very long.

With twenty tracks occupying 77:29, Number Ones is a decent exploration of the popular hits of the Bee Gees. Featuring the new song “Man In The Middle” as a tribute for Maurice Gibb (who died prior to the album’s release), the album is otherwise a straightforward compilation album with no truly new material. The Bee Gees wrote their own songs (though in “Islands In The Stream,” the perform additional lyrics not written by them) and played their own instruments. The vocals were performed by the band and they were involved with the production of most of the tracks. More than ever a tool of the studio, the Bee Gees had a pretty solid musical vision and the execution of it is wonderful on Number Ones.

Instrumentally, Number Ones is split pretty evenly between tracks that are dominated by guitars and those by keyboards. While the percussion section is seldom as memorable or noticeable, songs like “Stayin’ Alive” succeed because the keyboards are used as a percussion instrument to keep time and create an undeniable, danceable rhythm. Many of the songs are pop-rock ballads, like “I Started A Joke” and “Words,” which rely on untraditional rock instruments, like backing violins, in order to sell the emotion of the song. Number Ones illustrates a fairly broad concept of what the band is musically capable of and almost all of the songs are instantly recognizable, even if not from the Bee Gees.

Vocally, Barry Gibb presents most of the songs and unlike the stereotype, he does not present them exclusively in a falsetto. While Robin goes deeper on songs like “I Started A Joke,” Barry makes “Night Fever” and “Tragedy” distinctive with his ability to sing both clearly and supernaturally high (for a man). But what makes the band so incredible is how the men of the Bee Gees harmonize. Songs like “I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You,” “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” and “Love You Inside Out” would be diminished hearing them without the three part harmony that comes from all three Gibb brothers performing at once.

On Number Ones, the songs are generally concerned with love, love lost and dancing, which is what made the band so popular. The trio has a great sense of poetics and what many these days fail to recall is that they actually had a strong backing in the Folk tradition, which led them to create musical storysongs. They have a strong sense of imagery in their poetry with lines like “On my wall lies a photograph of you girl / Though I try to forget you somehow / You're the mirror of my soul so take me out of my hole / Let me try to go on living right now / Don't forget to remember me / And the love that used to be / I still remember you / I love you / In my heart lies a memory to tell the stars above / Don't forget to remember me my love” (“Don’t Forget To Remember”). The Bee Gees know how to write and with the tracks on Number Ones, I only found myself wanting more.

And rather than cite more lyrics or such, that is where I shall leave it. Number Ones is a culling down of Their Greatest Hits: The Record and fans of the Bee Gees will rightfully want more as opposed to less. Seeing as now there is an Ultimate Collection (I’m working to get my hands on that) Number Ones is even less relevant now.

For other albums by bands, please check out my reviews of:
Pet Shop Boys - Pop Art
Crash Test Dummies - God Shuffled His Feet
Vertical Horizon - Everything You Want (single)

5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my index page!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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A Near-Perfect Soundtrack, An Otherwise Wonderful Album, Saturday Night Fever Lives Up!

The Good: Good lyrics, Decent vocals, Duration, Decent instrumental accompaniment
The Bad: One or two weaker tracks.
The Basics: A legitimately wonderful album, the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack holds up, for the most part, to this day as a great dance-pop work.


There are few albums that have the iconic value and almost instant recognition of the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack and were I rating it based solely on that, I would have to rate it as a perfect album. As it is, I come to the album long after it was released, has become a mainstay on many people’s shelves and has been usurped for best selling album of all time (thank you, The Bodyguard Soundtrack!). The truth is, as I listen to the album now, it might be a great soundtrack and it is a great album, but it is not flawless and the flaws come out in the latter half of the album and rob the work of a perfect (10/10) rating in my pantheon. Is it close? You bet. Is it worth buying? Absolutely! Is it perfect . . . no.

The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is largely the creative work of the band the Bee Gees, though it is a true soundtrack in that others perform some of their works and there are other works included on the album, including instrumental pieces. Saturday Night Fever is largely a dance-pop album and it holds up remarkably well as such. It is worth noting that I have never seen Saturday Night Fever and as a result, I have no commentary on how it fits with the film. I also have no memories from the film I am associating with the music. As a result, this is a very pure review of just the music on the album.

With seventeen tracks occupying 74:06 on a single c.d., Saturday Night Fever is largely the creative work of the Bee Gees. They wrote most of the songs, even when others like Yvonne Elliman and Tavares perform them, and they perform six of the songs. The band was not involved in the production of the album, so some of the creative control was out of their hands. Similarly, songs like “Boogie Shoes” and “Disco Inferno” were not associated with the Bee Gees at all.

Instrumentally, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is very much a dance-pop album. The songs that are by the Bee Gees are, in fact, the archetypal dance-pop works that led into the disco era. Songs like “Stayin’ Alive” and “Night Fever” are dominated by the keyboards and they have powerful beats that make one want to dance. Smartly, the album breaks up the harder, obvious dance songs with ballads like “How Deep Is Your Love” which actually employs a string section to accent the melody and make its romantic (or, depending on your perspective, sappy) points.

Outside the Bee Gees, the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack is melodic and strong with songs that use keyboards, like the reworking of Beethoven’s Fifth by Walter Murphy “Fifth Of Beethoven.” By speeding up the tempo and reworking the piece in keyboards, it sounds fresh and funky. Similarly, David Shire’s “Night On Disco Mountain” removes the menace of “Night On Bald Mountain” and makes the song danceable and fun. “Boogie Shoes” employs bawdy trumpets to make a very sexy dance song and “Open Sesame” is just a murky, bass-driven song. Saturday Night Fever might be largely dance music, but it has a remarkably diverse sound to it and the album mixes it up well to be very listenable.

Vocally, the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack is similarly diverse. While the Bee Gees present songs like “More Than A Woman” in soulful three-part harmony, Yvonne Elliman presents their song “If I Can’t Have You” in an energetic soprano voice. The latter half of the album with songs like “Disco Inferno” and “Boogie Shoes” have decidedly more masculine vocals which change the tenor to a sweatier, funkier sound than most of the early songs on the album. The vocals are usually clear and understandable, which goes a long way to accenting the lyrics.

Most of the songs on the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack are dance songs. Some, like “Boogie Shoes” are mood pieces intended to get one on the floor and dance. They do this wonderfully with the instrumental accompaniment, but with lines like “I Want To Do It 'til The Sun Comes Up / Uh Huh, And I Want To Do It 'til / I Can't Get Enough, Yeah, Yeah / I Want To Put On My My My My My / Boogie Shoes / Just To Boogie With You, Yeah” (“Boogie Shoes”) there is little lyrical meaning that is truly deep or revealing. Beyond the desire to dance and have something to sing about, the lines are largely meaningless (and I like the song a lot!). Similarly, outside a few yells like “Shazam!” and “Groove with the genie,” “Open Sesame” is little more than the line “Get down with the genie” repeated over and over again.

This is not to say all of the lines are bad. In fact, some of the best writing by the Bee Gees are on songs on the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack. The band has a real knack for love songs and when they sing “I know your eyes in the morning sun / I feel you touch me in the pouring rain / And the moment that you wander far from me / I wanna feel you in my arms again / And you come to me on a summer breeze / Keep me warm in your love / Then you softly leave / And it's me you need to show / How deep is your love” (“How Deep Is Your Love”) it is hard to deny their ability to create great imagery in their songs. Indeed, when it comes to love poetry, songs like “How Deep Is Your Love” do a great job of tapping into a universal set of emotions that people want to hear.

In all, Saturday Night Fever works well as an album, save that some of the middle tracks are unmemorable and have a very different tenor from the rest of the work, most notably “Open Sesame.” That is the weak track, but anyone who is looking for an iconic 1970s album will find it here and it does manage to still resonate today. The high point is “How Deep Is Your Love.”

For other works by male bands, please check out my reviews of:
Wonderwall - Oasis
God Shuffled His Feet - Crash Test Dummies
Minutes To Midnight - Linkin Park

9.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my index page!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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