Track Listing

1. Stayin' Alive - Bee Gees
2. How Deep Is Your Love - Bee Gees
3. Night Fever - Bee Gees
4. More Than A Woman - Bee Gees
5. Jive Talkin' - Bee Gees
6. You Should Be Dancing - Bee Gees
7. Calypso Breakdown - Donaldson, Ralph
8. If I Can't Have You - Elliman, Yvonne
9. Fifth Of Beethoven - Murphy, Walter
10. Open Sesame - Kool & The Gang
11. Boogie Shoes - KC & The Sunshine Band
12. MFSB - KC & The Sunshine Band
13. K Jee - KC & The Sunshine Band
14. Disco Inferno - Tramps
15. Manhattan Skyline - Tramps
16. Night On Disco Mountain - Tramps
17. Salsation - Tramps

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38121 in Music
• Released on: 1996-02-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording remastered, Soundtrack
• Original language: English, Italian
• Running time: 118 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Survivors of the disco boom of the late 1970s are of course bemused at the ease with which the patina of cultural significance has appeared on the music (and even the clothes) of the period. In any event, whether you can't resist tapping your feet to those four-on-the-floor Bee Gees tunes or whether you're curious about what is, after all, the precursor of hip hop, there's still no better way of enjoying this stuff than through this era-defining recording. Interestingly, there's more social comment here than the happy tunes might suggest, such as in the lyrics of "Staying Alive" which are entirely reminiscent of the theme of the movie They Shoot Horses, Don't They? in their depiction of dance as a desperate escape from social deprivation. Well, up to a point. Then there's "Night Fever" and "Disco Inferno" and all the other white-suits-and-sequins standards which epitomised the movement. What's notable--and perhaps surprising--are the strong melodic and lyrical identities the songs all have, which resulted in a string of hit singles. If you were there, you'll want this music. If you weren't, you'll still want it. It explains a lot. --Roger Thomas

Customer Reviews

SOUNDTRACK TO THE LATE SEVENTIES
This masterpiece has lost none of its appeal after 25 years, proving the critics wrong and the BeeGees right. Part of its popularity must be due to the clever mix of fast dance numbers and lovely soaring ballads. The frenetic pace of e.g. Staying Alive and Night Fever is balanced by the serene pace of How Deep Is Your Love. For fans of the old-style BeeGees ballads, this new direction with the edgy falsetto vocals and the nervous beat came as a shock initially, but those hits like Jive Talkin' and You Should Be Dancing soon enough swept one up in the disco fever. I love Yvonne Elliman's poignant ballad If I Can't Have You, while the tracks by Kool & The Gang, MFSB and KC & The Sunshine Band are great too. But the real underground classic here is Disco Inferno by Trammps, nine minutes of burbling, bubbling, stomping, storming, gripping funk that is as anthemic as any great rock song by for example Bruce Springsteen. Come to think of it, most of the BeeGees tracks here can also be considered as anthems of the disco generation. Besides serving as bridges between the classic hits, the filler tracks like A Fifth Of Beethoven and Salsation add authenticity to the overall listening experience and serve to strengthen the ambience. This album and the movie took disco out of the underground and reinvented it as a mainstream phenomenon. While rock music was going through the convulsions of the punk and new wave revolutions, disco was having the party of the decade. And this album, along with the music of Donna Summer, Grace Jones, Chic, Giorgio Moroder, Boney M, Village People and others, provided the soundtrack to an era.

The famous soundtrack
Soundtrack albums have always been something of a problem - either they stick closely to the movie (as they originally did), presenting a lot of music that makes no sense outside the context of the movie, or (as generally happens now) they gather together a collection of music that has little connection with the movie, except that bits of each song can be heard in the background of the movie. Occasionally, an old style soundtrack (such as West Side Story) had enough great music to sell in huge quantities, but such soundtracks were the exception. The Saturday night fever soundtrack marked the beginning of the shift to a more popular form of soundtrack album, although there are some weak tracks here.

The Bee Gees wrote most of the music for this album and recorded some of it themselves. They gave More than a woman to Tavares although their own version of the song also appears on the album. They gave If I can't have you to Yvonne Elliman although they had already released their own version of the song as the B-side to one of their hits. They also included a couple of their own oldies (Jive talking, You should be dancing) on the soundtrack, but the most important tracks here are the first three tracks - Staying alive, How deep in your love and Night fever - all of which were huge hits around the world although they were bigger hits in America than anywhere else. Of the other tracks, Boogie shoes (KC and the sunshine band), Disco inferno (Trammps) and Open sesame (Kool and the gang) are the best.

Those classic tracks can, of course, be found elsewhere. You would that an appearance on a successful album like this would make stars of the contributors that weren't already stars, but David Shire (for example) disappeared as quickly as he came.

If you only want the best songs, you may prefer to buy them by the individual artists, beginning with a Bee Gees compilation (there are plenty to choose from) but despite some weak tracks, this album is the soundtrack of an era.

Beware - not original artists !
If you are looking at the item with the bright blue cover and John Travola character in a white suit, then this CD is not sung by the original artists - I know I bought this and then had to buy the proper one. If you want the original soundtrack by the original artists then buy the CD with the Bee Gees on the cover. Unfortunately Amazon are using the same reviews for both, I did ring and tell them but it hasn't been changed yet. My copy is now at the Cancer Research shop....