Bee Gees

One of the defining pop albums of the late-1970s, this massively successful album found the Bee Gees embracing Disco and Philly Soul while retaining their trademark three-part harmonies and love for melodramatic balladry. "Jive Talkin'" alone makes it a classic of its era.

Main Course, the best-sounding Bee Gees album ever, represents a last-ditch effort to
reestablish the group's mass popularity in front of their upcoming U.S. tour. My guess is that
it should succeed, at least to some extent, due to Arif Mardin's spectacular production,
which presents the Bee Gees in blackface on the album's four genuinely exciting cuts.
"Nights on Broadway" and especially "Fanny (Be Tender with My Love)" boast spa... More >

At first I was put off by the commercial desperation that induced these chronic fatuosos to turn out their brightest album in many years. But commercial success validated it: "Nights on Broadway" and "Jive Talkin'" turned out to be the kind of fluff that sticks. Sad to say, an unpleasant tension between feigned soulfulness and transparent insincerity still mars most of side two, which does, however, lead off with an undiscovered gem: "All This Making Love," a baroque, frantically mechanical evocation of compulsive sex. (Grade - B+)