How Deep Is Your Love (1977)

Performer: The Bee Gees                                   Writer: The Bee Gees
Highest US Chart Position: #1                             Label: RSO
Musicians: Barry Gibb, Alan Kendall, Blue Weaver, Maurice Gibb and Dennis Bryon

The incongruity of the song “How Deep Is Your Love” with the film it came from is almost too bizarre to consider. Saturday Night Fever is a terrible movie, especially in its treatment of women. I hate misogynist films and this is one of the worse. The disconnect between the two comes from the fact that the Bee Gees didn’t write their songs for the soundtrack. They had been working on recording a follow-up album to the highly successful Children of the World when their manager, Robert Stigwood, asked if they could give him some songs for a film he was producing and Barry Gibb selflessly gave him what they had done so far. Of course the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever was one of the biggest selling albums of all time, simultaneously making the Bee Gees superstars and engendering hatred in the hearts of millions for their unrivaled success. But if there was a Beatles of the seventies, it was the Bee Gees. Like the album as a whole, the single was massive, going to number one on the Billboard charts in the fall of 1977 and staying on the Hot 100 for thirty-three weeks, almost until the summer of 1978, the longest running single ever on the charts. Initially, it seems a remarkable achievement . . . until you hear the song. I can remember vividly driving to school one morning that fall while it was still dark, to play in the jazz band before regular classes, and instead just sitting there listening, unable to turn off the car radio because I was so captivated by its perfection.

The song begins on the downbeat with the full band, the electric piano of Blue Weaver prominent and the underpinning of the whole sound. The brothers hit on a harmony “ah” at the end of the second measure and hold it for four measures, descending on the fifth, and then on into the lead vocal by Barry. While Dennis Bryon plays a rim click on two and four on the snare along with the piano and Maurice on bass, Alan Kendall does a nice job of hitting the second beat of every measure on guitar. The chorus is a beautiful blend of vocal harmonies and octaves, layered background lyrics supported by strings. What’s so interesting is that the title line of the song actually comes at the end of the verse, then the background vocals repeat it underneath and suddenly take over the lead to sing the chorus. In the second verse Weaver improvises a little more under Barry’s vocal and then halfway through strings are laid in and they continue on into and throughout the second chorus. In lieu of a bridge, the brothers sing “la-la” instead of words to the melody of the first half of the third verse while the strings soar. Then Barry comes in again to finish the second half of the third verse, all the while the volume and density of the music continues to build the further the song goes on. He ad libs a bit on the opening of the next chorus, and then the brothers “la-la” again, but instead of another verse it simply links to the final chorus with Barry sustaining a falsetto note at the beginning, and the strings play a counter-melody. A final out chorus fades to the end of the song.

While Barry’s vocal sounds double-tracked on the verses, he is actually singing in unison with Maurice. And their use of multi-tracking on all of the vocals is probably as good as anything they ever did. The lyrics make it one of the classic love songs of the seventies, which still astounds me because of how the sentiments actually express the very opposite of what they were meant to support on the screen. The popularity of the song wasn’t just confined to the charts either, as it went on to win a Grammy Award for best pop performance by a group in 1977. The song entered the Hot 100 at the end of September and held the top spot for three weeks at the end of December and beginning of January, but didn’t drop off the charts until early May. The B-side of the single, “Can’t Keep a Good Man Down” was taken from their previous live album, a disco tune similar to “Night Fever,” though not nearly as catchy. Since the Bee Gees only had four new tunes on the soundtrack album, it makes sense that they would reach back to promote their previous album on the flip sides. The song was on the charts for nearly the entire time I was a sophomore in high school, and it remains unforgettable. I didn’t buy many albums back then, but this was definitely one of the singles that I had in my collection and it was in heavy rotation all throughout my high school years. What’s interesting is that I had no idea it was on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack until decades later. To my ears it sounded like something that belonged in another realm of songwriting and performing. If I had to name my favorite song of the entire decade, I would be hard pressed not to choose “How Deep Is Your Love.”