listening to the bee gees

I've been listening to the Bee Gees recently. You know, what with me being ultra-cool and modern and everything.

Actually, I shouldn't mock the Bee Gees. It's occurred to me that they were geniuses, and tellingly, their songs are everywhere, still. The close-harmony modulating chords stretch way beyond 'Jive Talking' and 'Night Fever', as brilliant as those tracks are.

I think because they came to define an era, the late 70s and early 80s almost trapped the Brothers Gibb into a disco-genre all of their own - and in the wake of that era, I grew up believing their music to be over-simple, cheesy and old-fashioned, not realising that the popularity of so many artists rested on it. It took me a long time to realise that the Bee Gees are of course, none of those things.

Before those high-octane decades, these three genial siblings reinvented themselves time and again - from sitting on stools in black and white Australian TV, singing 'Blowin' in the Wind' and writing quivering ballads like 'Massachusetts' or 'Nights on Broadway'... to penning classic hits for Diana Ross, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, they just kept moving, adapting, staying alive, if you will.

At the core of their work though, even in the 90s when they dropped the high voices and started singing 'Too Much Heaven' an octave lower, the same strands are still there, reimagined: Barry smiles and sings through the verse, then Robin and Maurice sing a third above and a third below respectively, and as the carefully coreographed harmonies swoon across the unexpected chords, we find ourselves moved, and moving once again.

Capturing a simple idea and developing it into something uniquely you that's recognisable or memorable, is a great way to write songs. Every single one of The Bee Gees' classics has a memorable hook, a distinctive feel, and a unique style. And they did it time after time.

I'm not sure why I started listening to them again. Anyway, as cheesy and as old-fashioned as it might seem, I quite like the Bee Gees.