On The Road Again: Bee Gees "Their Greatests Hits: The Record"

miércoles, 23 de mayo de 2018

Bee Gees "Their Greatests Hits: The Record"

Their Greatest Hits: The Record is the career retrospective greatest hits album by the Bee Gees, released on UTV Records and Polydor in November 2001 as HDCD. The album includes 40 tracks spanning over 35 years of music. Four of the songs were new recordings of classic Gibb compositions originally recorded by other artists, including "Emotion" (Samantha Sang), "Heartbreaker" (Dionne Warwick), "Islands in the Stream" (Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton), and "Immortality" (Celine Dion). It also features the Barry Gibb duet with Barbra Streisand, "Guilty", which originally appeared on Streisand's 1980 album of the same name. It is currently out of print and has been supplanted by another compilation, The Ultimate Bee Gees.

The album peaked at No. 5 twice in the UK, the first time upon its release in 2001 and again in January 2003 (following the death of Maurice Gibb). It has since been certified triple platinum by the BPI for sales of over 900,000 copies.

In the US, the album debuted on the Billboard 200 album chart at No. 49. It spent a total of 40 weeks on the chart and was certified platinum by the RIAA in February 2002 for sales of over one million copies there.

There are two bonus songs on the Japanese release, "Melody Fair" and "My World" (the latter is also a bonus track on the UK release along with "Jumbo"). Copies sold at the American retailer Target included a bonus disc entitled 5 Live Recordings.

Most of the songs are in chronological order, except for the placements of "You Should Be Dancing", which was released before "Love So Right", and "Spicks and Specks", a song from 1966 that ends disc two, which makes it something of a bonus track.

"Emotion" and "Heartbreaker" were recorded in 1994 as part of a Bee Gees compilation album called Love Songs which was planned for release in 1995. "Islands in the Stream" was recorded in 2001 with Robin singing lead in contemporary R&B sound rather than the more traditional arrangement like that heard on One Night Only, which had Barry singing lead (Barry did not perform vocals on this revised version). "Immortality" is the original writing demo from 1996, which includes Barry singing in high falsetto as a guide to Celine Dion who would go on to record the song in 1997.

The very first UK pressings used the wrong version of "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" with Barry singing the opening verse. A mastering fault was also present in "More Than a Woman", with the audio noticeably dipping to the right briefly during the first verse. These were corrected after several thousand copies had already been distributed.

Track listing

All compositions by Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb, except as indicated. ** Only appears in Japan Bonus Tracks version.

Disc one