Songoftheday 1/5/13 - Sharper than a knife help me to know you show me the night to satisfy a sinner with the flash of an eye...

Bee Gees - "The Woman In You"
from the album Staying Alive (Original Soundtrack) (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: 24 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 6

Today's Song of the Day is the return of the disco sibling heroes, the Bee Gees, who were born on the Isle of Man off the English coast, but moved to Australia as kids. They started their musical career at a very young age, and while Barry and younger twin Gibb brothers Maurice and Robin had their first minor chart hit with "The Battle of the Blue & The Grey" in 1963, it wasn't until three years later that they scored their first big hit, "Spicks and Specks", which went top-5 in Australia, topped the chart in neighboring New Zealand, and went top-10 in Denmark & Holland over in Europe.

That success afforded the boys a worldwide record deal, and by 1967, they had their first top-40 hit in America and England, "New York Mining Disaster, 1941". By then you can tell the influence of the Beatles and other British Invasion bands in their sound. Also the group had the brothers as well as non-familial units Vince Mulouney and Colin Petersen. That same year, their song "Massachusetts" (sung by Robin) became their first #1 hit both in Great Britain and their adopted home country.

It took to their third internationally-released album, Idea, for the Bee Gees to get their first top-10 hit in the US, with "I've Gotta Get A Message To You" in August of 1968. However, a rift between Barry and Robin caused the latter to leave the band temporarily, and the two non-Gibbs followed shortly after. He didn't stay away for long, and by 1970 he was back with new drummer Geoff Bridgford, and the foursome got their first top-5 US hit with "Lonely Days". They did even better with their followup, "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart", which was the Bee Gees' first #1 pop hit in the US. Bridgford left after that, leaving just the three brothers and the remaining "official" Bee Gees from then on.

After another lull, the Gibbs recruited producer Arif Mardin to help them transform their sound in the mid-70s, and the result was a more R&B/dance infusion, which came to full-power in 1975 with their second American #1 hit, "Jive Talkin'". They continued on without Arif (who had other projects) but with a brand new image and music, and again hit #1 here with "You Should Be Dancing".

Coming off of that big disco success, the band was hired to provide the music for the John Travolta film Saturday Night Fever, and the result was not only the biggest album of their career, but one of the landmark albums of pop music of all time. Besides classic hits written and produced by the brothers for other acts like Tavares and Yvonne Elliman on the soundtrack, they also packed it with three #1 singles of their own, with the ballad "How Deep Is Your Love", the iconic "Stayin' Alive", and my personal favorite "Night Fever". With a big-budget film version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the middle, the trio came back in 1979 with another studio album, Spirits Having Flown, and that also spun off a trio of chart-toppers with "Too Much Heaven", "Tragedy" and "Love You Inside Out".

But this massive success caused a mighty fall once "disco" was deemed persona non grata by the mainstream music audience, and their first album of the 80s, Living Eyes, was a relative flop, with one top-40 hit in the US (though they still made the top-10 in Australia). In order to revive their career, the Gibbs concentrated on producing other A-list artists like Dionne Warwick and Barbra Streisand, and signed up to do music for the sequel to Saturday Night Fever.

The new film, Staying Alive, followed a more mature Tony Manero as he aspired to be a Broadway dancer, and while his outfits caused much ridicule with the leggings and the headbands and all, the movie did pretty well, and the soundtrack album became a top-10 success. Not SNF success, but success just the same. The first single from the set, the Bee Gees' "The Woman In You", attempted to update their sound to a more "rock-ish" version of their falsettoed selves...

"The Woman In You" scored the Gibbs another top-40 hit in the States, as well as in most of Europe (curiously it was only a minor hit in the UK and Australia). They would have another lull for six years before returning to American radio with the top-10 hit "One" in 1989.

Up tomorrow: British musician gets out of Traffic for a soft-rock hit.