Peak
1
Weeks
27
Score
6,351
Chart Year
1978
The accompanying music video for the song is of an entirely different concept from Saturday Night Fever. Filmed on MGM Studios' backlot #2 in Culver City, California, while the group was simultaneously filming the movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the lot, the video featured Quality Street (a set that was used for such films as The Three Musketeers and Young Frankenstein) as well as the Grand Central Station set used in the films The Band Wagon and the opening of That's Entertainment! with Fred Astaire.[12] As the group walks past one of the railway cars in the video, the words "New York Central" can be seen printed on the side of the train above a passenger window. The MGM art directors added this bit of authenticity because the actual New York Central Railroad operated several lines from Grand Central Terminal in New York City during the 20th century until 1969
This plays over the opening credits of the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever while John Travolta struts through the streets of New York City. The movie has come to represent the disco era, and has made "Stayin' Alive" one of the songs most associated with disco. The Bee Gees had been singing in a high-falsetto style since their 1975 hit "Jive Talkin'," which was also on the soundtrack, but they were very popular as a vocal harmony group in the late '60s and early '70s. Their contributions to Saturday Night Fever brought them huge success, but marked them as disco singers. In a 1989 interview with Q magazine, they talked about this stigma and why they didn't deserve it. "We were not disco," Robin Gibb said. "People who emulated us were disco. All you heard on the radio was that dooo! dooo! syn-drum sound. We never had a syn-drum on one of our records!" This was one of five songs the Bee Gees wrote specifically for Saturday Night Fever. Like the film, the song is about much more than dancing and having a good time. It deals with struggle and aspiration; making your way in the world even after you've been kicked around. John Travolta's character in the movie is a young man working a dead-end job who feels alienated by his parents. Dancing is his form of expression, and weekends are his time to let loose. Robert Stigwood, who produced Saturday Night Fever, is the one who asked The Bee Gees to write music for the film. Stigwood got the idea for the film from a New York Magazine article called "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night," about the Brooklyn club scene. This may explain the rather random line in the song, "We can try to understand the New York Times' effect on man." The Bee Gees often pointed out that dancing is never specifically mentioned in "Stayin' Alive," although when this woman's man goes where there's "music loud and women warm," it's clear he's ready to boogie. Robin Gibb said the lyrics "very obviously state the scenario of survival," and Barry said it was influenced by New York City. "The energy level at that point in the late '70s was really that - it was survival," he said. (both quotes from the documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart) Robert Stigwood asked for a song called "Saturday Night," but the Bee Gees wanted nothing to do with that title, since many other songs, including a very popular one by the Bay City Rollers, had that name. Stigwood objected when he's heard the song was called "Stayin' Alive," but the group told him that if he didn't like it, they would just use the song on their own album. This was the second of four US #1 hits from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, following "How Deep Is Your Love," which was released ahead of the film, which hit theaters December 14, 1977. "Stayin' Alive" was released one day before the movie, but many theatergoers had already heard the song in trailers for the film. It quickly climbed the charts, reaching the top spot on February 4, 1978 and staying there for four weeks. The soundtrack was an unqualified success, winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and becoming the best-selling album ever until it was dethroned by Michael Jackson's Thriller. It remained the best-selling soundtrack of all time until it was surpassed by the soundtrack to The Bodyguard. The Bee Gees recorded this in a French studio called the Chateau D'Herouville, where Elton John recorded his Caribou album in 1974. The group quickly learned that the grounds had fallen into disrepair, but they made the most of it, spending almost all their time in the studio in very prolific sessions. In 1983, The Bee Gees recorded songs for a sequel to Saturday Night Fever that was called Staying Alive. It was directed by Sylvester Stallone, and while it was a critical flop, it did very well at the box office, grossing about $64 million on a budget of only $8 million. The film came years after disco had faded, and was released at a time when both John Travolta and The Bee Gees were at career ebbs. In 1987, The Bee Gees returned with a UK #1 hit called "You Win Again," while John Travolta stayed in a career funk until the 1989 movie Look Who's Talking. (We're kidding. His next good movie was actually Pulp Fiction in 1994.) The set of Staying Alive was where Richard Marx, who was working on the soundtrack, first met Cynthia Rhodes, who was the female lead in the film. The couple were married in 1989; Marx wrote the song "Now And Forever" about her. (Thanks to Gary Ugarek) Responding to a question about his song in a 1988 issue of Rolling Stone, the Gibb brothers stated: "We'd like to dress it up in a white suit and set it on fire." The were referring to the deleterious effect the song had on their career and image. When they recorded "Stayin' Alive," The Bee Gees were more than just the Gibb brothers: guitarist Alan Kendall, keyboard player Blue Weaver, and drummer Dennis Bryon were key members, if not official. Byran, though, got called away when his mother fell ill, leaving them without a drummer. Their producer/engineers, Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson, kept work going by looping a bar of Bryon's drumming on "Night Fever" and using that as the drum track. The built the song from there, adding the bass, then the guitar. They planned to replace the drum loop with live drums when Bryon returned, but it sounded so good they left it in. This won a Grammy for Best Arrangement For Voices. The Italian Dance group Eiffel 65 used the chorus from this in their song "Voglia Dance All Night." In 1995, the British electronic group N-Trance covered the song, taking it to #2 in the UK. Their version featured vocals by Viveen Wray and former KLF rapper Ricardo Da Force. >> A team from the University of Illinois medical school suggested that this would be an ideal song to listen to on an iPod while performing chest compressions on someone who has just suffered a heart attack. The American Heart Association has stated that the optimum tempo at which to perform CPR on someone who has just suffered a heart attack is 100 beats a minute. The research team highlighted this song as, at 103 beats per minute, it has almost the perfect rhythm to help jump-start a stopped heart. It happens that "Another One Bites The Dust" has a similar beat, but it was agreed that the Queen song doesn't seem quite as appropriate. Dweezil Zappa recorded this for his album Confessions with Ozzy Osbourne on lead vocals. Ozzy's record company didn't want it released, so Donny Osmond's vocals were used instead. The Ozzy version can be found on some bootlegs. Capital Cities recorded a cover of this song that they released online in 2013. Sebu Simonian of the duo told us: "The classic Bee Gees version of that song is universally loved and enjoyed, but I feel like it's such a great song that it can easily be performed in different ways and impart a different kind of emotion. And to our surprise, it was never really covered in a different way. When we cover songs, we like to pick songs that are great and timeless, but haven't really been covered much or haven't been covered in a new way. So that's what we decided to do with this one - give it a different emotional impact." Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty dance to this song in a bar in the 1980 film Airplane!. >> The Bee Gees were well aware that they were creating a heart-thumping rhythm. "We thought when we were writing it that we should emulate the human heart," Robin Gibb explained in Daniel Rachel's The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters. "We got Blue Weaver who was the keyboard player at the time to lie on the floor and put electrodes on his heart and put it through the control room. Then we got the drummer to play the heartbeat. We were the first people in the world to do a drum loop based on that." In The Office episode "Stress Relief" (2009), a CPR instructor uses the song to help teach the procedure to the Dunder Mifflin staff, but they start singing and dancing along with it instead. Mashup masters Pomplamoose combined "Stayin' Alive" with the Jamiroquai song "Virtual Insanity" in 2018. The grooves synch surprisingly well. Avu-chan of the band Queen Bee recorded a Japanese-language version that appears in the 2022 movie Bullet Train, which is set in Japan.
Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk I'm a woman's man, no time to talk Music loud and women warm, I've been kicked around Since I was born And now it's alright, it's okay And you may look the other way We can try to understand The New York Times' effect on man Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin' And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive Oh, when you walk Well now, I get low and I get high And if I can't get either, I really try Got the wings of Heaven on my shoes I'm a dancin' man and I just can't lose You know it's alright, it's okay I'll live to see another day We can try to understand The New York Times' effect on man Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin' And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive (oh) Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive (oh) Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me Somebody help me, yeah Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me, yeah I'm stayin' alive Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk I'm a woman's man, no time to talk Music loud and women warm I've been kicked around since I was born And now it's all right, it's okay And you may look the other way We can try to understand The New York Times' effect on man Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin' And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive (hey) Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me Somebody help me, yeah Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me, yeah I'm stayin' alive Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me Somebody help me, yeah (ah, ah, ah) Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me, yeah I'm stayin' alive Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me Somebody help me, yeah (ah, ah, ah, ay) Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me, yeah I'm stayin' alive Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me Somebody help me, yeah (oh) Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me, yeah I'm stayin' alive
| Week | Chart Date | Position | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dec 10, 1977 | 65 | 61 |
| 2 | Dec 17, 1977 | 52 | 74 |
| 3 | Dec 24, 1977 | 39 | 87 |
| 4 | Dec 31, 1977 | 39 | 87 |
| 5 | Jan 7, 1978 | 28 | 98 |
| 6 | Jan 14, 1978 | 17 | 109 |
| 7 | Jan 21, 1978 | 10 | 116 |
| 8 | Jan 28, 1978 | 3 | 123 |
| 9 | Feb 4, 1978 | 1 | 125 |
| 10 | Feb 11, 1978 | 1 | 125 |
| 11 | Feb 18, 1978 | 1 | 125 |
| 12 | Feb 25, 1978 | 1 | 125 |
| 13 | Mar 4, 1978 | 2 | 124 |
| 14 | Mar 11, 1978 | 6 | 120 |
| 15 | Mar 18, 1978 | 2 | 124 |
| 16 | Mar 25, 1978 | 2 | 124 |
| 17 | Apr 1, 1978 | 2 | 124 |
| 18 | Apr 8, 1978 | 2 | 124 |
| 19 | Apr 15, 1978 | 2 | 124 |
| 20 | Apr 22, 1978 | 13 | 113 |