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Released in 2004 (review written July 31, 2025)
Rating: 9/10 I must have bought this CD at Target, on a whim. Ever since I first could form memories, I've loved disco. My Aunt Judy gave me a disco compilation for Christmas once. As a dumb child I didn't really seek things out until much later (just around 6th grade or a little before it). Boy was I in for a surprise. 1. Massachussetts - They didn't just make disco! Their start was just really high quality, well-produced 60s pop music. This song never fails to bring a few tears. It sounds vaguely like a Christmas song. 2. World - A flat earther's nightmare right here. Why do they keep me here, indeed? The lyrics are far more sinister and cryptic than they used to be. I've said it before but I rarely listened to the words in music and just absorbed their emotional aesthetics. 3. Words - The piano intro is so beautiful. This one got me as a child. Words were indeed all I ever had, and so it remains to this day. 4. I've Gotta Get A Message To You - My favorite song on the compilation was this one. I never knew what it's about. It's the urgency, the sheer desperation, that was so gut-wrenching. I wanted to confess my love to this girl in the school player, an 8th grader named Emily, but I was only a 6th grader. "One more hour and my life will be through" indeed. I felt like if I couldn't win her love, if I couldn't be with her, then there was no point in being alive. She was supposed to be the one for me. Puberty is a hell of a drug... (also, at around 2:30 in the song, listen for someone in the recording studio going "ow"; I wonder what happened?). 5. I Started A Joke - This song means more and more to me the older I get. It already made me suicidal as a kid but the pain it puts me in now is so much more absurd and bitter. Sometimes I wonder if gnosticism is true to some extent, if solipsism is awell-kept secret. It seems a lot of terrible things in the world the last 20 years came from my imagination. Perhaps when I finally die, the world can truly live again... 6. Don't Forget To Remember - This could've been played on a contemporary country & western station back when it released. It's so country styled, especially the voice (don't know which Gibb brother it is). I wonder if the Gibbs brothers were experimenting at this point. 7. Lonely Days - For a brief period of time this was my favorite. It was roughly April to August 2006. After getting kicked out of my old school for uh, reasons I can go over some other time, I went back to my old school. There was a girl there named Ashley, blonde with glasses, who was so pretty. I never talked to her but liked to imagine being married to her. I'd listen to this song a lot when I went on the yearly camping trip with my parents. I remember going fishing on the lake with my dad and staring out over the placid waters, imagining Ashley with an apron and bandana, cooking a chicken dinner while I kissed her all along her neck. "Hello Mr. Sunshine, you've brightened up my day, come sit beside me, in your way". 8. How Can I Mend A Broken Heart - This is where the musical style really starts to shift. I regret to say that I have yet to explore the Bee Gees discography beyond this compilation (mostly, I'm afraid I'd be disappointed). It was sounding more "modern" for the time. I especially like the major pentatonic that runs real quick in the background a few times. It's very 70s. The words mean way more to me at this age. Let me live again. 9. Jive Talkin' - I disliked this song back in 6th grade but I enjoy it much more now. The electronic sounds are especially cool and I wonder if Yellow Magic Orchestra borrowed that "riff". The clapping part made me think of this one girl named Briana at school. I had zero attraction to her, it just made me think of her so I avoided it. I tend to hate clapping in music. It makes me cringe. Probably a leftover of preschool and being forced to clap along. 10. You Should Be Dancing - I have no clue what he's singing. Is it "what you doin' in the river Nyvette"? I have no idea. But who cares? Instead of figuring out the lyrics, you should be dancing! 11. Love So Right - A lot of people hate these disco era ballads but I'm a sucker. The Gibb voices are immaculate and the songwriting tugs away at your heart. This one doesn't make me sad about girls or anything but it makes me extremely nostalgic for long afternoons after school, waiting for my parents to pick me up. I'd just stare down the hallway or mindlessly browse library books or sit under the big oak trees or loiter in my lunch time spot in the far corner of the school, listening to this. It makes me want to be 11-years old again so badly, just to get a glimpse of it one more time. Most people have songs that put them in a "time and place" and this is that one, for me. 12. How Deep Is Your Love - This compilation is perfectly balanced in its fast-to-slow ratio. It gives you enough of a break to really appreciate the dance songs. I remember humming to this one a lot. Singing was too embarrassing and I couldn't whistle yet back then. 13. Stayin' Alive - The classic! Everyone knows this one, and I feel like only the biggest philistines couldn't appreciate it in some way. Perhaps it's a bit too overplayed and I can understand that. It is the go-to disco song for just about everyone. The very concept is often tied to some piece of the melody or lyrical phrase. I refuse to bow down to the hipster-contrarian overlords nowadays (I had enough of that in high school) and will say that in many, perhaps most cases, conventionally popular things were considered good for a reason. There are much better disco tunes out there but they deserve as much recognition as Stayin' Alive. They don't have to steal attention from each other. The whole genre deserves more love. 14. Night Fever - This is much more of a cocaine-fueled song in my opinion. You can really feel the drug-induced euphoria in it, moreso than in Stayin' Alive. I guess it would be more accurate to say it was popper-fueled (amyl nitrite, which I've read may have been the real cause of AIDS which was blamed on a fake virus). I really like the fake chimes in this song. 15. Too Much Heaven - None of the songs from here on out give me that overwhelming emotional tingling. They're just beautiful, pleasant, and make me happy to remember things fondly. Assuming the track list is mostly chronological, the Bee Gees seem to have lost the edge that made me fall in love with them, that sense of urgency I mentioned earlier. That being said, the major seventh chord they land on melts my heart. 16. Tragedy - Was this used in Saturday Night Fever? I haven't seen the movie in a long time. It sounds like that scene where John Travolta drinks a lot and drives to that bridge. I don't remember it well. It's a song for when you want to throw your life away. 17. Love You Inside Out - The chords changes are amazing and one of these days I'm gonna sit down and use my ears to figure them out. They're pretty common in romantic songs, I know, but there's something very compelling about it. The song sounds a bit more clinical in comparison to earlier ones though so it's not my favorite. "What am I gonna do when I lose that buyer"? What does that even mean? A song about lost sales? 18. You Win Again - Ugh, I don't like this one much. It's very industrial. It always made think of Enya and New Age music despite how mechanical it sounds. What a contradiction. 19. Man In The Middle - This one sounds awful. It's a bit of a stain on the compilation. Stuff like this makes me afraid to dig into the discography because I don't want to be disappointed. I know music nerds frown on compilations (I did for many years) but sometimes they exist for a reason. I don't know whether or not that's the case for the Bee Gees. For all I know, I've been missing out all these years. Associations:
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