Barry Gibb

Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook Vol 1 Out Friday

The first major album of 2021 is from Barry Gibb ( right) of the Bee Gees, born four months before Bowie and still going strong. He too comes bearing covers, but there’s a twist: these are songs he recorded himself, with his brothers Maurice and Robin, who died in 2003 and 2012 respectively. The genius of these Mancunian Australians went all the way from pop to disco and back again. Now 12 of their best tunes are back as country duets. It sounds like the sort of challenge you’d find on a musical game show, but it makes sense because hits such as Words, To Love Somebody and I ’ ve Gotta Get A Message To You are so well constructed. Great songs don’t care about genre. In a perfect world, Greenfields would be released with no track listing, so we could sit through it in suspense, wondering w he therGibbw as going to give Night Fever and Stayin’ Alive the full Nashville treatment. The answer is no, for now, but the fact that this album is billed as Vol 1 suggests that he will get around to them.

The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is represented by two of the umpteen hits it yielded: Jive Talkin’, created in Miami but quite at home in Tennessee, and How Deep Is Your Love, which, as a classic ballad, was halfway to country already. Listening to it again, with an extra twang to underline its beautiful sadness, you’ll see exactly why Randy Newman described it as ‘ one of my favourite records I ever had’.

Sir Barry’s quaver – once ridiculed, now revered – is in good shape at the age of 74. As his guests range from Dolly Parton to Gillian Welch, he has some top-class help with the high notes.

The whole album is beautiful and, for seven minutes in the middle, as Gibb is joined by Brandi Carlile on Run To Me and Alison Krauss on Too Much Heaven, it’s sublime.