Bee Gees

"Tragedy" and the lovely dance ballad "Love You Inside Out" both were No. 1 singles in 1979. Likewise, Spirits Have Flown topped the album charts, but the band was starting to be seen as disco barbarians at the rock 'n' roll gates instead of the pop veterans they truly were. The awkward, junior high-worthy cover photo didn't help either. Still, the Bee Gees were always more than the sum of their singles; check out the groovy "Living Together" or the weeper "Stop (Think Again)." This contains the brilliance -- and high-pitched excesses -- of the Bee Gees at their disco peak.

"The record the world's been waiting for," reads an ad for Spirits Having Flown, and that's
not just hype, since the Bee Gees' new album represents a deliberate attempt to fashion a
"global" pop. Instead of extending the airy pop-disco of Saturday Night Fever, the Brothers
Gibb have consolidated several styles, only one of which is disco, to make slower, more
elaborate music. Miami Blue-Eyed Soul Meets Europop in Ecumenical Heaven mig... More >

I admire the perverse riskiness of this music, which neglects disco bounce in favor of demented falsetto abstraction, less love-man than newborn-kitten. And I'm genuinely fond of many small moments of madness here, like the way the three separate multitracked voices echo the phrase "living together." But obsessive ornamentation can't transform a curiosity into inhabitable music, and there's not one song here that equals any on the first side of Saturday Night Fever. (Grade - B-)