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My Favorite Bee Gee Songs

I started loving the BeeGees in the early 70s, though they’d been around.  I had put a Bee Gee documentary in my Netflix Instant queu a couple months back and finally watched it after Robin died and it made me remember why I love so many songs they sang and wrote.  And why they impacted music like they did.

I think that a lot of people who didn’t “grow up with the Bee Gees” think of the 70s disco-craze and believe that is all they had, but that just is not true (though they did it bigger and better than anyone, truly).  I am not going to defend them or try to prove their great worth to musical history in the century just past, though I would be remiss not to mention that they are among the top grossing performers of all time.  I will just say that they were really brothers (in case you didn’t know), and that three-part harmony in hit after hit through 4 decades will remain, ever, one of the most beautiful sounds on my stereo and in my heart.

Here are my top-ten favorite Bee Gee songs, in a slightly organized order but only because today this seems right.

Other days – something else.  But today, in this order:

1.  How Deep is Your Love.

2.  Words (1968)

3.  Run to Me (1972)

4.  How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (early 1970s). Did they better with age? 1971 vs. the late 90s


5.  Love You Inside Out

6.  More Than a Woman…OK the suits on this video are a little ungodly. Boys, please. Don’t cause a sister to sin.

7.  Love So Right

8.  Fanny Be Tender, just before their disco days exploded, I loved this one.

9.  Too Much Heaven

10.  To Love Somebody (late 1960s). Written for Otis Redding, but covered by a gazillion artists over the years, I still enjoy this 1960s rendition from one of their early albums (which I own, of course).

My favorites that they wrote for others:

Emotion (which they wrote for Samantha Sang)

Come on Over (for Olivia Newton-John)

Rest Your Love on Me (Olivia Newton-John and Andy Gibb)

Heartbreaker (Dionne Warwick). Dionne is Whitney Houston’s aunt.

Islands in the Stream (Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers)

If I Can’t Have You (which they actually wrote for Yvonne Elliman, 1977)

Immortality (for Celine Dion, late 90s).  I don’t know if it’s the song or the beautiful video?  Lovely words (“We don’t say good-bye…”).  Classic little melodies within the melody.  Just intoxicating.  And they are all three there, the BeeGees, Barry, Maurice and Robin.  Immortality in song.

SONG FOR A SUNDAY: How Deep is Your Love ~

The BeeGees!  Unplugged.

This is a an audio-only recording of the BeeGees in the studio as they are actually putting one of the most incredibly beautiful and timeless songs together for posterity.  You hear them toy with lyrics and experiment with different chord progressions.  For almost 10 minutes, you are caught up in the creative process hearing those amazing voices, the magic 3 becoming one polyganol, complex arianic harmony reverberating through your very soul and blending effortlessly as they explore various  possibilities for the final rendition. 

Originally recorded in 1977, this song hung out in the top ten on the charts for 17 weeks.  LISTEN TO THIS (really!) and see how a classic love song is composed, discovered, birthed, created.  I am in love with the process, the era, the melody, the creativity and the breath and poetry of it! 

There is no question they were pulling song from the very heavenlies, where embrocated music flows thick for healing, crescendo and diminuendo, the rise and fall of sweet sound swelling like the ocean and leaving its imprint as it recedes.  What’s captured on this recording is so soft and gentle,  yet full-heavy with fervent emotion.  And though I have always mourned my inability to be poetic and lyrical and fear to even attempt it, there is also no question that listening to these voices pulls on

my strong desire

to be able to say in words

what I simply cannot,

yet feel.

so.

deeply. 

How deeply?  Mmmm, mm…  So very. 

you have to disagree with everything except the piano, black

and white keys marking the path you must climb step…

-Anthony Walton on Jazz

If the remaining two brothers Gibb could just be at a piano in my house doing this forever ~ then aaaahhhh…heaven, almost too much {veiled reference, wink wink}.  And if music, and all art, really, is meant to invoke emotion from those who experience it…this is art – the art on the walls of my heart.

The flawless recording as we have all come to know and love it, How Deep is Your Love

From Saturday Night Fever.

Beegees Home

BeeGees on YouTube A great live performance of this same song.

www.beegees.com