You Should Be Dancing

Album

Children of the World

Label

RSO Records

Genre

Disco

Composer(s)

Barry Gibb;Robin Gibb;Maurice Gibb

Entered Chart

Jul 3, 1976

Peak Date

Sep 4, 1976

Released

June 1976

Recorded

19 January–1, 8 February 1976 6 May 1976 Studio Criteria (Miami)Le Studio (Morin Heights, Quebec)

Catalog #

RSO 853

B-Side

Subway

"You Should Be Dancing" is a song by the Bee Gees, from the album Children of the World, released in 1976. It hit No. 1 for one week on the American Billboard Hot 100, No. 1 for seven weeks on the US Hot Dance Club Play chart, and in September the same year, reached No. 5 on the UK Singles Chart.[3] The song also peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Soul chart. It was this song that first launched the Bee Gees into disco. It was also the only track from the group to top the dance chart. It is also one of six songs performed by the Bee Gees included in the Saturday Night Fever movie soundtrack which came out a year later.

This song was a #1 US hit in September 1976, becoming one of the biggest disco hits of the era. When the movie Saturday Night Fever hit theaters in December 1977, the song was used in a famous scene from the movie where John Travolta takes over the dance floor - an appropriate choice since the song is specifically about dancing.

"You Should Be Dancing" was included on the soundtrack along with five other songs performed by the Bee Gees (plus another they wrote: "If I Can't Have You" by Yvonne Elliman). The album sold over 15 million copies in the US, marking the Bee Gees as a disco act when their earlier output was more charitably classified as blue-eyed soul. Decades later, a new generation discovered the group's earlier work and the disco taint began to fade, but for Barry Gibb, the memories of the backlash didn't. "It still haunts me like hell," he told Mojo in 2001 about this time. "Every time anyone asks me about it my mouth goes dry."
"You Should Be Dancing" had a huge impact on the dance club scene. According to Nicky Siano, a DJ at various clubs in New York City (as told in the documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart), it was played at the hottest clubs about three times a night during its heyday, and helped bring disco culture - previously the province of the gay community - into the mainstream.
Along with "Jive Talkin'," this is one of two Bee Gees songs on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack that had already been released. It first appeared on their 1976 Children Of The World album.

John Travolta prepared for the Saturday Night Fever movie by practicing his dance moves to this song. When he was told by the producers that "Night Fever" would be used for the sequence for which he was practicing, Travolta insisted that "You Should Be Dancing" be used instead.

The dance sequence from the movie was choreographed by Deney Terrio, host of the TV show Dance Fever.
Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills and Nash played percussion on this track. He recalled to The Independent August 17, 2013: "We were in the studio next door making a CSN album and David (Crosby) was all full of himself and saying this is going to be the album of the year. I went, "No it's not, that's being recorded across the hall," 'cause I'd heard some of that Saturday Night Fever stuff and I knew it was totally unique and going to be a monster. So I played timbales and for a long time that was my only platinum single."
This features at the end of the 2010 movie Despicable Me, where the minions replace ballet music with the song so everyone can dance.
The Dee Gees, the disco side project of rock band The Foo Fighters, covered this for their debut album, Hail Satin. Recorded at the band's Studio 606, the record features four Bee Gees covers, an interpretation of Andy Gibb's "Shadow Dancing," and five live versions of tracks from their 2020 Medicine at Midnight project.