I'm owing this album a review since it brought me back some really good memories
Better late than never, here's my thoughts on
The Ultimate Bee Gees :
(WARNING: It's a loooong review
)
First thing that caught my attention was the total length of the album, almost 2h30 long, but then I scrolled down the tracks and noticed they are considerably short imo (3-4 min average), which means the album had a great amount of songs! So I decided to listen to CD 1 one day and CD 2 on the next day!
Doing this made me realize that CD 1 has more "partying" style songs, those are the songs you would probably hear on a disco or whatever. Meanwhile, CD 2 is full of love songs, slowed ballads for a more calm mood.
Speaking about the whole album in general, I tried to pay attention at the guitars at least and found a really great guitar work on the whole album! Lyrically, if I got it right, the majority of the songs are romantic-themed (love, broken hearts, passion and things like that), it's a very powerful album with pure poetry.
But the vocals really stood out to me. I'm still mesmerized with the high notes they can reach! Also, a huge shoutout to the harmonies, they are really well executed and their voices combine so perfectly, maybe because they're brothers but insane anyway!
Now, diving deeper into some tracks from CD 1, it surprised me the fact that I already heard of more songs than I thought, not in its entirety of course, just small parts, but as Ari said before I didn't know them by name, except for
Stayin' Alive, because I think it's basically IMPOSSIBLE for someone to have NEVER heard of it once. Seriously, everyone must've heard at least the chorus of this song, at least once. I also knew the chorus from
More Than A Woman, and
Spicks and Specks sounds familiar to me even though I can't remember where I heard this song. Between all the songs I haven't heard about,
This is Where I Came In is the track I liked the most. Really loved the acoustic guitar on this song
also, I noticed
Nights On Broadway has a really cool guitar effect, if I'm not mistaken is a wah pedal?
Speaking now about the CD 2, even though it has the slower songs, it's where the things got crazy to me.
The album starts with
How Deep Is Your Love which is the only track from this album I knew back and forth before listening to it on its entirety because I used to LOVE this song when I was a kid. Surprisingly I still remember all the lyrics after all those years lol and it was good to hear this song again
But this left me wondering WHY this was the only one I knew from them. Between all the 40 songs on the album why I only knew one and it was this one? I'll return to this later.
Out of the songs that I didn't know from CD 2, I really liked
Lonely Days. The piano is amazing and there's also a lot of other instruments that gives and orchestral vibe to the song. Unfortunately I can't tell which instruments they used
but it's very cool! Loved
New York Mining Disaster 1941 for the guitars and also the vocals on
Love So Right.
Now, the song from CD 2 that surprised me the most is...
For Whom The Bell Tolls. First of all I had no clue Bee Gees also had a song called For Whom The Bell Tolls
Right, I started playing it and right at the beginning it sounded strangely familiar. I decided to take a look at the lyrics but didn't recognize anything.
"Well but it really looks like I already heard this before", I thought.
"No, I definitely wouldn't forget the lyrics to a song called For Whom The Bell Tolls ".
I kept listening to the song and then all of sudden
it hit me. Like a rocket lol
There was this brazilian boy band that I used to be a DIE HARD fan when I was 4-5 years old. It was called
KLB and formed by three brothers: Kiko, Leandro and Bruno (hence the name lol
). And then I was almost sure it could be a song from them. I was right. They recorded a version in portuguese for this song:
Being 100% honest, I don't remember anything from the lyrics of their version too
but it really surprised me how this melody kept alive in my mind after about 15 years.
Right, to find this version, I decided to google, well, "KLB Bee Gees"
and for my own surprise, this wasn't the only result. They did a lot of covers and versions from Bee Gees songs.
And
THIS is the moment where everything started to make sense for me: Kiko, Leandro and Bruno were 3 brothers in a band singing together romantic-alike songs, sounded familiar?
So of course Bee Gees were a major, if not the biggest influence on their sound. Which is why they made so much Bee Gees covers and versions, including guess what? A cover of
HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE. And I finally discovered why I knew this song, even though I used to listen to the original version by Bee Gees anyway
So, this was more than just The Ultimate Bee Gees for me. It was a journey through my childhood and my first ever musical memories and experiences. Even though I'm not a fan of KLB anymore, to be able to, 15 years later, figure it out the influences of a band who influenced me so much as a kid was really special
Thank you so much for this recommendation Ed!