Discovering Bee Gees Forgotten Album

[jeffd8382]

Bee Gees’ 1981 album Living Eyes is a forgotten gem and one of my personal all-time favorite albums. Glad to see it get some love!

https://youtu.be/x1SvKJyjzwk?si=fl4ZWQV1gTgt0hlW

[Villavic]

I was 12 when SNF was released and I became a BG fan. Before that I only remember hearing Melody Fair (I went to see that movie, loved it), Love So Righ,t and Nights On Broadway because part of that song was used as a jingle in a tricycle commercial.

I liked the SNF BG songs but they always get too monotonous towards the end, they repeat the same phrase a lot. Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me, yeah... or Gimme that night fever, night fever. We know how to show it

I don't even remember Living Eyes album, I barely remember He's a Liar. By 1981 Bee Gees was rarely played on the radio. The saturation that this band had generated, to say it was excessive is an understatement. DJs played on all pop radios, some of them an entire hour daily, at the cinema before the film, on the bus, in the dentist's waiting room. I never saw anything like that again, not with Madonna, not even with MJ.

It was only natural that there would come a time when nobody wanted to listen to them anymore. Years passed before I started to listen to Bee Gees occasionally, but I really started liking them again when they released One Night Only at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 1998. What a great concert! It made me delve into their old albums, documentaries, and so on.

They have beautiful songs like "I Started a Joke," "New York Mining Disaster 1941," "One," and "Love You Inside Out."

That's a band I would have loved to see live. I'll see this video, thanks for sharing.

[Macfan4life]

Originally Posted by Villavic

I was 12 when SNF was released and I became a BG fan. Before that I only remember hearing Melody Fair (I went to see that movie, loved it), Love So Righ,t and Nights On Broadway because part of that song was used as a jingle in a tricycle commercial.

I liked the SNF BG songs but they always get too monotonous towards the end, they repeat the same phrase a lot. Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me, yeah... or Gimme that night fever, night fever. We know how to show it

I don't even remember Living Eyes album, I barely remember He's a Liar. By 1981 Bee Gees was rarely played on the radio. The saturation that this band had generated, to say it was excessive is an understatement. DJs played on all pop radios, some of them an entire hour daily, at the cinema before the film, on the bus, in the dentist's waiting room. I never saw anything like that again, not with Madonna, not even with MJ.

It was only natural that there would come a time when nobody wanted to listen to them anymore. Years passed before I started to listen to Bee Gees occasionally, but I really started liking them again when they released One Night Only at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 1998. What a great concert! It made me delve into their old albums, documentaries, and so on.

They have beautiful songs like "I Started a Joke," "New York Mining Disaster 1941," "One," and "Love You Inside Out."

That's a band I would have loved to see live. I'll see this video, thanks for sharing.

The Bee Gees were really talented in the ways they crafted their songs. Even Lindsey admits to ripping off Jive Talking for Second Hand News. They were not originally disco but rode that disco wave. They survived the SNF saturation and still had a #1 in 1979 with Tragedy. But the Disco Sucks movement completely destroyed their career. This is exactly why their 1981 album is not even remembered. Even though they never started out making disco music but they became almost the poster child for disco music. I remember back in 1989 it was almost considered a come back when they had a hit with "One". They had almost been blacklisted from radio for 10 years.
This is what happens to oversaturated bands and what I think Lindsey feared if they made Rumours 2.

[HomerMcvie]

I always found Barry's falsetto lead vocals to be a bit of a schtick, and think that sound just ran it's course of constantly being on the radio. It became tiresome to listen to.

[Villavic]

Originally Posted by Macfan4life

They survived the SNF saturation and still had a #1 in 1979 with Tragedy. But the Disco Sucks movement completely destroyed their career.

1979 was still a "Bee Gees fever" and the singles from Spirits Having Flown were hits. I remember a doc where Maurice laughed about the painted airplane they used for the tour that year, finding it funny, and excessive too. I guess by 1980 I still listening to related Bee Gees songs, I mean the last "success" I heard with a Bee Gees sound was Barbra's Guilty album, I liked those songs too.

Yes by 1982 Bee Gees were practically banned, but I guess the oversaturation was the major factor, much more than the fall of Disco music. I mean, I remembered listening to Donna Summer's songs on the radio during the 80s like The Wanderer, State of Independence, This Time I Know, She Works Hard, etc. Not classic disco anymore, and not as successful as in the 70s, but she was able to survive and was not banned at all. But Bee Gees? cri cri...
Just my perception. Anyway now I do enjoy listening to them, even some of their SNF and disco singles, but their early songs are the most beautiful to me.

[Macfan4life]

It was SNF that knocked Rumours out of the top spot. Disco had been around for several years but the SNF album made disco rule the next 2 years. Not only did the Bee Gees drag the album to #1 with all of their massive hits but they also wrote at least 2 other chart topping hits for other artists on the soundtrack.
BTW, this is what secretly ate at their brother who had major success but it really bothered him when he was always compared with his brothers. His career could not last past the 70s either. Peruvian dust killing his marriage, career and eventually himself.