THIS WEEK IN 1987
Few suffered more from the disco backlash at the start of the eighties than the Bee Gees. The brothers had enjoyed a remarkable run in the mid to late seventies, during which time they smashed a multitude of records with their mega-selling ‘Saturday Night Fever’ soundtrack, but when the disco bubble burst, they fell out of favour on a monumental scale. Some US radio stations hosted ‘Bee GeesFree Weekends’ and the trio’s 1981 album ‘Living Eyes’, the first CD ever played in public (on the BBC’s ‘Tomorrow’s World’), failed to make either the UK or US top 40.
The Bee Gees’ seventeenth album E.S.P., released in 1987, marked the beginning of a comeback, selling over three million copies. It was their first album in six years and their first under a new contract with Warner Bros.
‘You Win Again’, the first single from E.S.P., went to number one in many European countries, including the UK and Ireland. In the UK they became the first group to score a number one hit in each of the three decades: the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
The song, which prevented George Michael’s ‘Faith’ from reaching No. 1 inthe UK, earned the Gibb brothers an Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically.
‘You Win Again’ was not a success in the US where DJs were still reluctant to play the music of the Bee Gees, but they would return to favour - and the Billboard Hot 100 top ten - with 1989’s ‘One’.
Thanks to hits such as ‘You Win Again’, the Bee Gees, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, are among the world’s best-selling artists of all time, with global sales of more than 220 million records.