The Bee Gees: Song by Song

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by skyblue17, Apr 4, 2020.

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  1. Folknik

    Folknik Forum Resident

    I loved Life In a Tin Can from the first listening, considering it one of their best right away. By the second or 3rd listening is when I heard it as a concept album about a man falsely imprisoned for murder. He escapes and lives as a fugitive "across the USA" and is finally exonerated when the real killer confesses. Since I had never heard or read about anyone else interpreting it that way, I though I may have been reading too much into it. Years later, I read an excerpt from an interview with Maurice Gibb from the time between To Whom It May Concern and Life In a Tin Can, in which he said the next album they were working on (and Tin Can was the next one released) was a concept album.
     
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  2. Folknik

    Folknik Forum Resident

    It's my understanding that they often toured with an orchestra in the late '60s and early '70s. This song is a true gem. Imagine the melody just played by an orchestra. It holds up alongside some of the melodic themes of 19th century Romantic composers like Brahms and Tchaikovsky. And the Bee Gees were writing stuff like this in their teens!
     
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  3. skyblue17

    skyblue17 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New York City
    And speaking of the Beatles....



    So Beatles-y!
     
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  4. Hadean75

    Hadean75 Forum Moonlighter

    From the Horizontal album:

    The Earnest Of Being George



    Fairy stories in the penny arcade
    You bought my love and I paid


    I've always loved that lyric. Very catchy song. :agree:
     
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  5. Hadean75

    Hadean75 Forum Moonlighter

    :laugh:

    Great song off an underrated album. :righton:
     
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  6. Hadean75

    Hadean75 Forum Moonlighter

    Speaking of.....

    From the 2 Years On album:

    Portrait Of Louise



    I've always found this one irresistible to sing along to. And the harmonies are just awesome.
     
  7. Hadean75

    Hadean75 Forum Moonlighter

    From the This Is Where I Came In album:

    This Is Where I Came In



    First off, I've always gotten a kick out of the music video. :laugh:

    I know this album has a lot of mixed reviews, but I really do like this track. It's catchy, and the lyrics are very interesting (I love the twists and turns in the words and phrases).
     
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  8. Hadean75

    Hadean75 Forum Moonlighter

    To go with the above video:

    Bee Gees - The making of "This is Where I Came In"

     
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  9. Photon

    Photon Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    I am a huge fan of this album. And I do get the fact that it could be a concept album. I like the way you look at - a man falsely imprisoned for murder. This album definitely deserves a wider audience.
     
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  10. Photon

    Photon Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    I think that this track would have really rocked live!
     
  11. Photon

    Photon Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    One of my favourites on Horizontal. I must admit that since I read your post, the song has been playing in my head nonstop! :D
     
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  12. Photon

    Photon Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    When I first heard this I was amazed. Maurice's awesome guitar work, Robin's soaring vocal, the funny video, and they sported a whole new look (mostly Barry and Robin). I thought they would have a huge hit with this one.
     
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  13. JeffMo

    JeffMo Format Agnostic

    Location:
    New England
    The title track is great, but I'm one that was disappointed in the album overall. I firmly believe the brothers needed each other, and while some of the solo material is quite good, it did lack the special quality they got when collaborating.

    I find it a shame the last Bee Gees studio album feels more like a comp.
     
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  14. Hadean75

    Hadean75 Forum Moonlighter

    I also had mixed feelings about this album. I still think that the group songs (like the title track) aside, that it was Robin and Maurice's tracks that save the album. :shrug:
     
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  15. skyblue17

    skyblue17 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New York City
    I get this. At the time the album came out, I owned it but I didn't listen to it much beyond the title track. I came to appreciate it later but the title track is one of only a few on the record that sounds like it was created by a group of three people who have worked together their entire lives. I really do like a lot of the songs on the album, they just don't really feel like Bee Gees songs to me, for the most part. Compare that with Still Waters, and yeah. I totally get why people were disappointed by the full package. However, the sum of the parts kind of make up for what's lacking in the whole, for me. And I feel like if they knew this would be their last album together, things might've been presented differently.

    However, "This is Where I Came In" is a fantastic track that feels like the next era of the Bee Gees, even if the album itself didn't provide much more of that. I love it for that. So much fun to sing, such an interesting vibe, good vocals, good instrumentation. I dig it.
     
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  16. ferdinandhudson

    ferdinandhudson Forum Resident

    Location:
    Skåne
    One of the four songs Robin recorded with Peter-John Vettese in London in 1999 for the This Is Where I Came In. Left off for some inexplicable reason (reportedly due to Polygram's expectations of what is appropriate Bee Gees music...) and still officially lingers in the vault to this day. Blew me away on the first listen I got from a fan-made CD I received back then.
     
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  17. skyblue17

    skyblue17 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New York City
    This song is unreal. Total mistake that it wasn't released. Especially since the reasoning is kinda flawed, too. And Robin's performance on it is sublime. I don't think the song itself should have set off any alarms at all, perhaps they thought some of the vocals were a little much? But for me, they just add to the amazingness of this song.

    One thing I really love about these songs from his era of Robin's songwriting is that I can hear each of them being a hit if performed by someone else as well. They are incredibly current. Though I love his voice on each of his "solo" songs around this time, I can easily hear a younger pop artist making it their own and it blowing up. It makes me more curious about the dynamic in the studio when it came to the vibes of the songs, especially later in their career. The production of this song is perfect.

    I also love the lyric here: "You're my religion / Your faith is my church /Girl I will be faithful to you"

    Reminds me of another favorite of mine, from "Cryin' Every Day": "Well your love is a cathedral and I came down here to pray"

    Ugh, so good.
     
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  18. skyblue17

    skyblue17 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New York City
    While on the topic of Robin's songs from the TIWICI era, here's another that I think would have done well, especially if performed by a more current act, because the song itself is fantastic and fit in very well with what was popular at the time.

     
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  19. ferdinandhudson

    ferdinandhudson Forum Resident

    Location:
    Skåne
    I think the combination of sex and the mention of religion could have played a part as far as the US record company is concerned. I, myself, don't hear it but then I'm a depraved, atheist Swede so personally I hear nothing objectionable. I think it is pretty darn tame by comparison to other artists' work.
     
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  20. Hadean75

    Hadean75 Forum Moonlighter

    Love the song. Love the video.

    Morning Of My Life

     
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  21. Hadean75

    Hadean75 Forum Moonlighter

    From the Horizontal album:

    Lemons Never Forget

    The Bee Gees | Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In | George Schlatter



    An apple is a fool
    But lemons never do forget
     
  22. skyblue17

    skyblue17 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New York City
    I really like this song a lot.

    I've noticed that in concert, it tended to be the song that Maurice decided to go rogue on, leaving the audience reacting more to his antics than Barry's singing. I wonder why it is that this song was decided to get that treatment!
     
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  23. Hadean75

    Hadean75 Forum Moonlighter

    Don't know, but I always loved when he did! :laugh:

     
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  24. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    Don’t care for it and it definitely doesn’t sound like a Bee Gees song, which I would guess Polygram wanted...it does have the group’s name on the cover. :D Remember, Robin really never did that well as a solo artist. Really, none of them did. I wish they had worked together on that album. Based on Robin and Barry not getting along during that time, that was probably the only way they could produce it. Like all of you have said, there are some good songs but it sure doesn’t feel like a group effort aside from the title track.
     
  25. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    Real good song! And some nice harmony, sounded like they all worked together a bit on that one.
     
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