99 Stayin’ Alive

BEE GEES 1977

This disco classic was written when producer Robert Stigwood approached the Bee Gees for music for a film based on the Brooklyn club scene. He needed a groove for an eight-minute John Travolta dance sequence and asked for a song called “Saturday Night,” but since the Bay City Rollers already had a hit with that title, the band wisely took things in a different direction. “John couldn’t dance to ‘Stayin’ Alive.’ It wasn’t a dance record, if you think about it,” Barry Gibb said later. Travolta didn’t need to dance to it, anyway — all he had to do was strut through the film’s opening scene.