Bee Gees – Number Ones

Okay, I’m in a confessional mood (look out). Sometimes I pretend I haven’t heard the phone when really (tee hee hee) I have. Not bad enough? Oh, okay. Once I kicked the stilt of a stiltwalker. No?! Okay, okay… Once, and I still don’t know what possessed me, I shaved all the hair off my arms. No?! I used to fancy Jools Holland. I bought some MC Hammer trousers and wanted to buy a shell suit. I don’t really like the taste of vodka but I do like snowballs. I smoke menthols like Dot Cotton… okay, okay – I like the Bee Gees!

Come on, you know the Bee Gees are where it’s at. They wrote at a furious rate, embracing so many new sounds, pioneering discopop, staying tight as a family unit and stropping like ladies on live TV. Their crimes? Teeth, hair and choirboy voices. Look beyond the funny, look beyond the Kenny Everett sketches and you’re looking at grand masters of pop.

‘I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You’, the pleading simplicity, yes, the voices are whiny but my god, surely this song sums up that one particular lovestruck-and-desperate feeling better than any? ‘Tragedy’: it’s no coincidence that the marketing machine churned out a Steps cover… it’s a perfect pop song. It transcends time and it scurries under ‘the cool’. It’s just a great song.

To my little goodtime gal mind, the best Bee Gees work came from the ‘Night Fever’/'Stayin’ Alive’ days. And here ‘Night Fever’, ‘Stayin’ Alive’, ‘More Than A Woman,’ ‘J J J Jive Talkin’’, ‘You Should Be Dancing’… are little nuggets of disco gold.

Twenty number ones here, each selling thousands and thousands of copies the world over. And if we just ignore the recent American election for a blissful moment: that many people surely can’t be wrong?

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