Their Greatest Hits

Here’s a frightening admission: I can actually remember when "New York Mining Disaster 1941" was top of the hit parade. It was 1966, and I thought the Bee Gees were the best goddam thing to hit the airwaves since that mop-haired quartet whose name escapes me for the moment.
When I heard "Massachusetts" a year later, I was utterly transported (this is an expression indicating my state of mental bliss; it doesn’t mean I moved to another town).

These guys have been around for so long that one is inclined to forget just how many hits they’ve enjoyed over a period of four decades — a veritable lifetime in the fickle world of pop music.
They are the only group to have placed five singles simultaneously in the US Top 10, and to have monopolised the US charts with six successive number ones. Add seven Grammys, a Brit Award, 10 Lifetime Achievement Awards and a spot in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and you begin to get the picture…

This new double-DC release by Universal Music/Polydor, "Bee Gees — Their Greatest Hits", delivers on the promise in its title: there are all of 40 familiar songs here, ranging from the airily upbeat to the low and soulful, from the quick and sassy to the borderline melancholic.

Falsetto vocals are a Brothers Gibb trademark, and it’s of mild interest that they’re able to do it without evidence of strain or, for that matter, provoking jibes from Unbelievers about tight underpants and unfortunate accidents involving bicycle crossbars.
(Sadly, the same cannot be said for that annoying singer with the vestigial moustache who — not content with changing his name — did away with his name entirely.)

Songs like "Words", "I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You", "I Started a Joke", and "Massachusetts" are timeless classics, and require no accolade here.
But if you haven’t listened to Bee Gees songs for a while, you’d do well to reacquaint yourself with a group capable of reinventing themselves so effectively that you really don’t notice their wrinkles. Witness the astonishing success of "Saturday Night Fever", ranked as the biggest-selling soundtrack album of all time.

You’ll discover why the Bee Gees are admired by pop superstars like Bono of U2, Noel Gallagher of Oasis, and even Destiny’s Child.
And why over 500 cover versions of their songs have been performed by other artists.
Nice one.