Nights on Broadway
The beginning of the Bee Gees stratospheric explosion
I came to this song only a few years ago. Don’t know how I missed it in the Bee Gees explosion that came to my attention with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. It was in recording this song that Barry Gibb found his famous falsetto. The lyrics are a little creepy but you forget about that when listening to the beautiful harmonies the brothers were famous for.
I haven’t found a good alternative to Spotify and I found out that YouTube pays even less, so it’s back to posting Spotify links. Read this article to find out about the problems with Spotify and act accordingly.
It’s a shame it’s so short but here are the brothers performing the opening of the song in concert in 1997. You can really hear the blending of their voices into something extraordinary.
Here is Ben Platt performing it for Barry Gibb at The Kennedy Centre Honors last month.
It’s now one of my favourite Bee Gees songs and certainly the one I’ve listened to most often in the past year. I’ve started singing it myself as well but I’m still working on those high notes!
Enjoy your song of the day.
Great spotlight, MK! So many things astound me about this song! 1) This and "Jive Talkin'" from the same album sound like they'd be so at home (or taken from) the "SNF" soundtrack that these two songs pre-dated by two years! 2) The off-hand "Can you scream in falsetto?" question producer Arif Mardin asked (I think all of them) for the end of "Nights," and 3) Barry having no clue as to the extent of his range (or head voice) until Mardin's oh-by-the-way request!
Another producer to whom it never occurs to ask that, and we don't have Barry's unheard-of falsetto, and he also doesn't discover the width and depth of his talent! Likely recorded later in the "Main Course" sessions, this song ("Baby As You Turn Away") has Barry singing the verses entirely in falsetto, moving to chest voice only during the chorus: https://open.spotify.com/track/3MmQJLdDy6Ri11r8XWLDAu?si=ee1c979e45844adc
Wow I’d forgotten how much I loved this song! I’d always assumed it was in the SNF soundtrack