Bee Gees "One"

One is the Bee Gees' eighteenth studio album (sixteenth worldwide), released in April 1989 (August 1989 in the United States).

After the European success of their previous album, E.S.P., the Gibb brothers began to work on the One album in early 1988. In March, their brother Andy suddenly died and the Bee Gees took a break until November when they returned to the studio to complete the album, but this time they shifted to Mayfair Studios in London, making One their first album since Mr. Natural to be recorded partly or fully in the British capital, though "Ordinary Lives" was started before Andy Gibb's death. The style of One was more melancholic than E.S.P., and heavily influenced by the loss of their brother. The album was dedicated to Andy and the song "Wish You Were Here" was written as a tribute to him.

The album was co-produced with Brian Tench, who had worked with them on the previous album. Related session outtake "Shape of Things to Come" was written for the Bee Gees' contribution to the 1988 Olympics album called One Moment in Time released the same year.

The album had varying degrees of success across the world. In Europe, the album reached the top 10 in Germany and Switzerland and reached the top 40 in the UK and France. North American audiences had still not embraced the Bee Gees as they were still regarded as a disco group and the album failed to reach the top 40 in the US and Canada, despite the success of the title track reaching No. 7 in the US and No. 11 in Canada. Other singles from the album included "Bodyguard" and "Tokyo Nights". In the UK, none of the singles from the album reached the top 40; this was ironic as every other Bee Gees album from the latter phase of their career produced at least one UK hit while making little impact in the US.

Barry Gibb commented on the song "One" at the time by saying "This song brought us back to US radio. A leading media paper recently stated regarding this song, 'The Bee Gees are capable of at least one more hit.' I don't believe that, I believe we could have at least two."

Track listing

In the US, "Wing and a Prayer" was substituted with the group's European #1 hit, "You Win Again".

All tracks are written by Barry, Robin & Maurice Gibb. Lead vocals as indicated.

1. "Ordinary Lives" Barry and Robin 4:01
2. "One" Barry 4:55
3. "Bodyguard" Robin and Barry 5:20
4. "It's My Neighborhood" Barry 4:19
5. "Tears" Barry 5:16
6. "Tokyo Nights" Robin 3:56
7. "Flesh and Blood" Robin 4:43
8. "Wish You Were Here" Barry 4:44
9. "House of Shame" Maurice and Barry 4:51
10. "Will You Ever Let Me" Barry 5:57
11. "Wing and a Prayer" Barry 4:05

Total length: 52:15

Bee Gees "E.S.P. (Single & Video)"

"E.S.P." was a single by the Bee Gees. Released in 1987, it was the follow-up to their successful single "You Win Again". The a cappella intro found on the album version was edited out for radio airplay.

The original title of the song is "XTC" or "Ecstasy" before the Gibbs realized that it sounded like a drug reference so they changed it to "E.S.P." Barry handles most lead vocal duties for this song while Robin sings a few lines and edges into falsetto for the choruses.

The demo of "E.S.P." was released in 1990 on the box set Tales from the Brothers Gibb, Like "You Win Again" it has the same drum program as the demo, and the same main vocal tracks, and it was speeded up by the same amount (103.25%), raising it a little more than a quarter tone, The finished version has a new a cappella opening and reaches the start of the demo at 0:33, There are seven edits, Both times through, four beats are dropped before the second verse ("There's danger"), The last two edits are additions going into the end, around 3:20, Not long after that the finished version has different ad lib vocals into the fade, Rhett Lawrence and Robbie Kondor are again the main musicians on the track, with Reb Beach. The finished version also features Robin screaming, unlike the demo where Barry's falsetto has a major presence. Brief studio footage of the brothers recording the vocals appeared in a German interview with Sabine Sauer.

The second single did much less well than "You Win Again", reaching only number 13 in Germany and outside the top forty elsewhere. Warner Bros. pushed "E.S.P." even more heavily with many alternate mixes on 12-inch singles and promo discs. The reprise, a piece of the a cappella opening, was used as the closing number of the album.

The B-side "Overnight" featured lead vocals by Maurice Gibb.

Bee Gees "You Win Again (Single & Video)"

"You Win Again" is a 1987 song written by Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb and performed by the Bee Gees. Released as a single in late 1987, it marked the start of the group's comeback, becoming a No. 1 hit in many European countries, including topping the UK Singles Chart — their first to do so in over eight years — and making them the first group to score a UK No. 1 hit in each of three decades: the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

As songwriters, the Gibb brothers received the 1987 British Academy's Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. In 1988, the band received a Brit Award nomination for Best British Group. In a UK television special on ITV in December 2011, it was voted second (behind "How Deep Is Your Love") in "The Nation's Favourite Bee Gees Song".

Barry Gibb wrote the melody while brother Maurice conceived the drum sounds (in his garage) that open the track. On "1000 UK #1 Hits" by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, Robin Gibb said "We absolutely thought that 'You Win Again' was going to be a big hit. It took us a month to cut it and get the right mix."

Maurice Gibb explained "You Win Again" in a May 2001 interview with Mojo:

"When we get together and write, it's not like three individuals ― it's like one person in the room. Usually, we have a book of titles and we just pick one. I loved 'You Win Again' as a title, but we had no idea how it might turn out as a song. It ended up as a big demo in my garage, and I recorded stomps and things. There was just one drum on there. The rest was just sounds. Then, everybody tried to talk us out of the stomps at the start. They didn't want it. 'Take it off. Too loud! Can we have them not on the intro, just when the music starts?' All this stuff, but as soon as you hear that 'jabba-doomba, jabba-doomba' on the radio, you know it's us. It's a signal. So, that's one little secret ― give people an automatic identification of who it is."

"You Win Again" was a number one single in Britain, Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Denmark and Norway, and reached the Top Ten in Italy, the Netherlands, Australia and Sweden. It also topped the Eurochart for four weeks.

"You Win Again" entered the UK singles chart at no. 87 in the chart week dated 19 September. It took just four weeks to reach number one, where it remained for four weeks, thus preventing George Michael's single "Faith" from reaching the top spot. When the single reached number one in the UK in mid-October 1987, it marked the Bee Gees as the first group to score a UK number one hit in each of three decades: the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. It ranked four in the UK's year-end singles sales chart.

However, the single was far less successful in the US, peaking at no. 75 on Billboard's Hot 100, perhaps down to a lingering association between the Bee Gees and the disco backlash that emerged in 1979, when the group (disco icons at the time) were at the height of their fame. Their next charting single, the 1989 hit "One", did return them to the US Top Ten.

"You Win Again" was released commercially on vinyl and cassette. The CD single was not common in the late 1980s, though a 1-track CD single was produced as a promotional-only copy given to radio stations and reviewers in the United States and a 2-track mini CD single was commercially released in Japan. The song also appeared as a bonus track on the American version of One, replacing the song "Wing and a Prayer".

Bee Gees "The Bee Gees' History"

Bee Gees History is a Japanese compilation album, released November 25th, 1989.

Track list:

1. New York Mining Disaster 1941 2:12
2. To Love Somebody 3:01
3. Massachusetts 2:25
4. Holiday 2:57
5. Words 3:17
6. I've Gotta Get A Message To You 3:04
7. In The Morning 3:57
8. Melody Fair 3:50
9. Don't Forget To Remember 3:32
10. Lonely Days 3:47
11. How Can You Mend A Broken Heart 4:00
12. Jive Talkin' 3:37
13. You Should Be Dancing 4:18
14. How Deep Is Your Love 3:41
15. Stayin' Alive 4:48
16. Night Fever 3:33
17. Too Much Heaven 4:57
18. Tragedy 5:05
19. Living Eyes 4:17

Compilation ℗1985 POLYDOR K.K.

Made in Japan

Bee Gees "Living Eyes"

Living Eyes is the Bee Gees' sixteenth original album (fourteenth internationally), released in 1981. The Bee Gees turned away from the disco sound that was prominent on their work in the middle-to-late 1970s with this album. However, the album was not a commercial success, perhaps due to their being so strongly associated with disco. It sold 750,000 copies worldwide, compared to 16 million copies of their previous studio album, Spirits Having Flown, in 1979. While it did not sell well in either the UK or the US, the album itself was a Top 40 hit in the majority of territories in which it saw wide release.

It would be the band's final album on RSO Records. The label would be absorbed into Polydor and subsequently discontinued.

Following the massive success from the Bee Gees production of Barbra Streisand's album Guilty, the Bee Gees regrouped at Middle Ear studios in October 1980 to record their next album. They began work on some of the songs that would go onto Living Eyes. As they had been on all their recordings since 1975, they were backed by Blue Weaver (keyboards, synthesisers, programming), Alan Kendall (lead guitar), and Dennis Bryon (drums, percussion), but the sessions broke down and the three backing musicians were fired. Alan Kendall would return to working with the Bee Gees in 1989, and he remained with them for the rest of their recording and touring career.

Recording began early in 1981 without the Bee Gees band that recorded and toured with the group in the late 1970s. Barry felt that he could create the sound he wanted with sessions musicians instead of a band, and the album featured musicians including Don Felder, Jeff Porcaro, Richard Tee, George Terry and Steve Gadd. Also, the Bee Gees stated that they were trying to avoid being pigeonholed as a disco act, which was why the album also featured minimal falsetto vocals (which had become a Bee Gees trademark by that time), with one notable exception being the song "Soldiers".

Barry, along with producers Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson had developed their own production style, with Spirits Having Flown and Barbra Streisand's album Guilty. But Robin and Maurice had become active in the studio again, contributing more to vocals and production, which created some tension between them and the Gibb-Galuten-Richardson production team. Galuten later commented on why Living Eyes failed to impact both US and UK charts:

"There was a tremendous fear, that we had fallen into a rut, and I felt strongly on Living Eyes that it was time to change. When we started working on [it] and it was not being fun, I remember sitting around with my friends at the time, and saying, 'It's just not working and I think that I'm going to leave.'"

Living Eyes also features the return of Robin and Maurice Gibb as a lead vocalist since 1975 in a whole song. As Barry says that his falsetto was the reason why Robin (or Maurice) had not taken lead vocals (in a whole track) on any song by the group between 1976 and 1979: "'God, every falsetto record we're putting out is a monster, we shouldn't change yet.' That's what stopped us from saying, 'Well it's time Robin had a lead.' But now it's no longer a sales point, it's important that Robin's voice get heard. It's equally important that Maurice's voice gets heard. And it's becoming less important that I get heard. And that's the way we work. There's no ego within the three of us, whoever's singing most or whoever has the most hits is irrelevant."

"Living Eyes was a turkey, I think, for a good reason, I don't think that last album does any harm but I'm really glad it was a turkey."

– Robin Gibb, on the album's failure unlike the group's previous releases.

Sales of Living Eyes were far lower than those of their previous album, Spirits Having Flown. In the US, the disco backlash was still strong, and many radio stations were not even playing the Bee Gees by 1981. Also, RSO Records had fallen out of the position to promote and sell records it had once held. Promotional staff had been cut to the bone mid-year because they had simply had no product to sell. There was also a Bee Gees lawsuit going on against Robert Stigwood and RSO Records, which did not help matters.

The Bee Gees themselves subsequently dismissed this album as weak, and having been recorded under pressure from their record company and management at a time when they needed to rethink their direction. Despite this, Barry commented about Living Eyes following its release, "It's our finest album in terms of depth, performance and quality of the production. It's been about 11 months working on this album, and we do tend to work an awful long time on our albums because we want to be sure." But in 1984, Barry admitted: "Obviously, we had a scare with Living Eyes. It wasn't the kind of album we should have brought out at that point. It was a little too downbeat, as opposed to having energy. But we were trying to go for a change, to draw ourselves away from the falsetto vocals and do something that might be a little different. We knew the risks when we did that."

Barry claimed, in 1990, "Living Eyes was just what was needed for us. We needed to stop being what we were. It was driving us all round the twist. We needed at that point to step back and look at our lives as individuals."

Living Eyes was chosen to be the first ever album to be manufactured on CD for demonstration purposes, as seen on the BBC TV program Tomorrow's World in 1981, and was featured on the inaugural issue of the Compact Disc trade magazine. It was the first Bee Gees album to be released on CD, in early 1983 when compact discs were first commercially available, though few were manufactured.

Track listing

All songs written by Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb except where noted.

"Living Eyes" 4:16

"He's a Liar" 4:00

"Paradise" 4:18

"Don't Fall in Love with Me" 4:55

"Soldiers" 4:25

"I Still Love You" 4:24

"Wildflower" 4:23

"Nothing Could Be Good" Barry Gibb,Robin Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Albhy Galuten 4:09

"Cryin' Every Day" 4:01

"Be Who You Are" Barry Gibb 6:38

Bee Gees "Spirits Having Flown"

Spirits Having Flown is the fifteenth album released by the Bee Gees. It was the group's first album after their collaboration on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The album's first three tracks were released as singles and all reached No. 1 in the US, giving the Bee Gees an unbroken run of six US chart-toppers in a one-year period and equaling a feat shared by Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, and The Beatles. It was the first Bee Gees album to make the UK top 40 in ten years (not counting the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever), as well as being their first and only UK No. 1 album. Spirits Having Flown also topped the charts in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and the US.

Spirits Having Flown marked the tail end of the band's most successful era, prior to a severe downturn in the early 1980s when they were subject to a near-total radio blackout (particularly in America) that Robin Gibb would refer to as "censorship" and "evil" in interviews.

Reprise Records remastered and re-released the album on CD in 2006, although it did not include any additional bonus tracks, demos or outtakes.

At the start of 1978, Barry Gibb produced the album Shadow Dancing by Andy Gibb. In February, Barry wrote the title song for the film Grease performed by Frankie Valli; also in February, another Barry Gibb composition from 1977 "Ain't Nothing Gonna Keep Me From You" was recorded by Teri DeSario. By March, the Bee Gees had started to record this album.

Co-producer Albhy Galuten recalls Spirits Having Flown as being created primarily by Barry Gibb, Karl Richardson and himself putting in long days and nights at Criteria Studios. Blue Weaver recalls others being involved. Both agree that Robin Gibb was active behind the scenes in songwriting and offering feedback to the recording process, but Maurice Gibb contributed probably the least he did on any Bee Gees album. Not only was his alcoholism sapping his creativity, but he was having back pains finally diagnosed in 1980 as caused by a bad disk. He said that he would be doing bass work and without his knowledge, Barry and Robin would hire in someone else to play parts that he was supposed to be playing; however, he said that whilst he played fine, neither Barry nor Robin could rely on him.

In the recording phase, Robin and Maurice now mainly played the role of backing and harmony vocalists, and even in that capacity Barry did many of the vocal dubs himself as he went over and over the recorded work. Robin contributed one solo lead vocal ("Living Together") which was sung in falsetto with Barry providing alternating lead vocals in his normal register. This was Robin's least amount of lead vocals on any Bee Gees album with the exception of 1970's Cucumber Castle, for which he was not part of the group at that time. As with the last four Bee Gees albums, Maurice did not have any solo lead vocals. While Barry is the most prominent lead vocalist on "Too Much Heaven," it features a mix of more than 20 vocal parts, including 6 tracks featuring Barry alone (3 on falsetto and 3 in chest voice) plus another 3 of Barry, Robin, and Maurice singing lead in chest voice together; while Barry is the most prominent.

The Bee Gees had been effectively typecast as a disco group after Saturday Night Fever, and in a 1978 interview Barry remarked "People think we're just about disco now. Of course that's not true. If you look at the SNF soundtrack, there's some dance music, but we also have ballads like 'More Than a Woman'." In an attempt to counter this typecasting, the first single from Spirits Having Flown was the ballad "Too Much Heaven". The horn section from Chicago (James Pankow, Walt Parazaider and Lee Loughnane) made a guest appearance on this album. At the time, they were next door working on the Chicago album Hot Streets. Thus the Bee Gees would return the favour as they appeared on Chicago's song "Little Miss Lovin'" and their keyboardist Blue Weaver appeared on "No Tell Lover". The Bee Gees also recorded "Desire" for the album but it was rejected and instead released as a solo single by their brother Andy.

Spirits Having Flown was released on January 24, 1979; it was rushed two weeks early due to American radio leaks. The album was released a few weeks later in New Zealand and South American countries. In the U.S. the album was supported by full page ads in Billboard and Rolling Stone, which gave the album a lengthy and positive review. It topped the album charts in several countries, including both the US and UK. Its three singles "Tragedy", "Too Much Heaven" and "Love You Inside Out" all topped the charts in the US. The title track was also released as a single in the UK and a few other countries in December 1979 to promote the Bee Gees Greatest compilation.

The album sold more than 20 million copies worldwide as of 1997. In 2003 the BBC even gave a figure of 30 million worldwide sales. The RIAA lists the album as having been certified "platinum" (1,000,000 sold), but RSO never had the album re-certified. Many articles and websites cite the album as having sold as many as 6,000,000 copies in the U.S. alone, but these results are unofficial, which is why the album does not appear on many 'best selling' lists, including Wikipedia's List of best-selling albums.

Track listing

All tracks were written by Barry, Robin & Maurice Gibb.

Side one

1. "Tragedy" 5:03
2. "Too Much Heaven" 4:55
3. "Love You Inside Out" 4:11
4. "Reaching Out" 4:05
5. "Spirits (Having Flown)" 5:19

Side two

1. "Search, Find" 4:13
2. "Stop (Think Again)" 6:40
3. "Living Together" 4:21
4. "I'm Satisfied" 3:55
5. "Until" 2:27

Bee Gees "Tragedy (Single & Video)"

"Tragedy" is a song released by the Bee Gees, written by Barry, Robin & Maurice Gibb, included on their 1979 album Spirits Having Flown. The single reached number one in the UK in February 1979 and repeated the feat the following month on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb wrote this song and "Too Much Heaven" in an afternoon off from making the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie, in which they were starring. In the same evening, they wrote "Shadow Dancing", which was performed by Andy Gibb (and reached number one in the US).

Though not originally in Saturday Night Fever, it has subsequently been added to the musical score of the West End version of the movie-musical. The song knocked "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor off the top spot in the US for two weeks before that song again returned to number one for an additional week. "Tragedy" was the second single out of the three released from the album to interrupt a song's stay at number one. In the US, it would become the fifth of six consecutive number-ones in a single year, tying the record with Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles for most consecutive number-ones in the US in a single year.

In 1979, NBC aired The Bee Gees Special, which showed how the sound effect for the explosion was created. Barry cupped his hands over a microphone and made an exploding sound with his mouth. Several of these sounds were then mixed together creating one large boom heard on the record.

Billboard Magazine felt that the song had similar intensity to "Stayin' Alive" and that it had multiple vocal and instrumental hooks and "graceful" harmonies.