Post by erik on Jan 20, 2024 19:53:34 GMT -5
Arguably the single most successful soundtrack recording in music history is in this week's Pop Music Album Spotlight, and it goes to a film that its studio had shockingly little faith in at first.
SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (Soundtrack; RSO; 1977)
The brainchild of the legendary (and sometimes rather controversial) English music impresario Robert Stigwood, the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, based on Nik Cohn’s magazine article “Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night”, began as a relatively low-budget (i.e., $3 million) film about the life of aspiring New York City dancer Tony Manero, portrayed by John Travolta. But when the finished film, directed by John Badham, was unleashed on an unsuspecting public in mid-December of that year, it elevated the popularity of disco music to levels not seen in the music industry since Elvis’ 1956 debut or the Beatles/British Invasion of 1964. Executives at Paramount Pictures, the studio releasing the film, held very little faith in the movie, given the fact that Norman Wexler’s screenplay contained a lot of street language, misogynistic and at times racist dialogue, earning the film an ‘R’ rating from the Motion Picture Association of America’s film ratings board. Even with that, however, the film managed to make a mind-busting $150 million at the box office, quite a fair amount of return on a film that was very much an adults-only product.
But even more significant than the film’s box office appeal was the jaw-droppingly successful 2-LP soundtrack album that came out of it, with one hit after another from the film dominating American radio and the music charts well into 1978. In particular, Stigwood’s principal act, The Bee Gees, who had had success in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s with orchestral pop-rock, saw their popularity fade for a time, then witnessed a revival through their classic 1975 smash “Jive Talkin’”, exploded in popularity with three consecutive #1 hits, “How Deep Is Your Love?”; “Staying Alive”; and “Night Fever” (the latter of which stayed at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for nine straight weeks, the most for any single since the Beatles’ 1968 classic “Hey Jude”.
The soundtrack, however, also included other major-league hits, including Yvonne Elliman’s cover of the Bee Gees’ “If I Can’t Have You”; Tavares’ version of the Bee Gees’ “More Than A Woman” (alongside the Bee Gees’ own version); “Boogie Shoes” by K.C. and the Sunshine Band; and the Trammps’ 11 minute-long “Disco Inferno”. All of these lit up the dance floors around the world for the rest of the decade, and would remain very immortal. Also included on the album was Walter Murphy’s #1 hit of 1976, “A Fifth Of Beethoven” (the famous discofied adaptation of the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5), and three disco pieces supplied by film composer David Shire: “Manhattan Skyline”; “Salsation”; and “Night On Disco Mountain” (a discofied adaptation of Modest Mussorgky’s sinister 1867 symphonic tone poem “A Night On Bald Mountain”). The album reached #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart for the week ending January 14, 1978, and stayed at #1 for twenty-six consecutive weeks, longer than any album since the 1962-63 success of the soundtrack for West Side Story (which had fifty-five non-consecutive weeks at #1). With thirty-seven million copies sold during its first year of release, it also remained the most successful album of all time, until Michael Jackson’s Thriller dethroned it in 1983-84.
While in actuality the disco genre’s shelf life was short (it was pretty much dead as an actual entity by 1983), the genre’s hits were still being played on radio stations all around; and the success of Saturday Night Fever, both in the cinema and on vinyl (and later CD as well), kept that flame alive. It would be ridiculous to say that Disco was ever a threat to rock and roll, as too many “Disco Sucks!” rock and roll fans has some believing in the late 1970’s; but this soundtrack recording is proof of how well this genre existed alongside FM rock during that period.
SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (Soundtrack; RSO; 1977)
The brainchild of the legendary (and sometimes rather controversial) English music impresario Robert Stigwood, the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, based on Nik Cohn’s magazine article “Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night”, began as a relatively low-budget (i.e., $3 million) film about the life of aspiring New York City dancer Tony Manero, portrayed by John Travolta. But when the finished film, directed by John Badham, was unleashed on an unsuspecting public in mid-December of that year, it elevated the popularity of disco music to levels not seen in the music industry since Elvis’ 1956 debut or the Beatles/British Invasion of 1964. Executives at Paramount Pictures, the studio releasing the film, held very little faith in the movie, given the fact that Norman Wexler’s screenplay contained a lot of street language, misogynistic and at times racist dialogue, earning the film an ‘R’ rating from the Motion Picture Association of America’s film ratings board. Even with that, however, the film managed to make a mind-busting $150 million at the box office, quite a fair amount of return on a film that was very much an adults-only product.
But even more significant than the film’s box office appeal was the jaw-droppingly successful 2-LP soundtrack album that came out of it, with one hit after another from the film dominating American radio and the music charts well into 1978. In particular, Stigwood’s principal act, The Bee Gees, who had had success in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s with orchestral pop-rock, saw their popularity fade for a time, then witnessed a revival through their classic 1975 smash “Jive Talkin’”, exploded in popularity with three consecutive #1 hits, “How Deep Is Your Love?”; “Staying Alive”; and “Night Fever” (the latter of which stayed at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for nine straight weeks, the most for any single since the Beatles’ 1968 classic “Hey Jude”.
The soundtrack, however, also included other major-league hits, including Yvonne Elliman’s cover of the Bee Gees’ “If I Can’t Have You”; Tavares’ version of the Bee Gees’ “More Than A Woman” (alongside the Bee Gees’ own version); “Boogie Shoes” by K.C. and the Sunshine Band; and the Trammps’ 11 minute-long “Disco Inferno”. All of these lit up the dance floors around the world for the rest of the decade, and would remain very immortal. Also included on the album was Walter Murphy’s #1 hit of 1976, “A Fifth Of Beethoven” (the famous discofied adaptation of the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5), and three disco pieces supplied by film composer David Shire: “Manhattan Skyline”; “Salsation”; and “Night On Disco Mountain” (a discofied adaptation of Modest Mussorgky’s sinister 1867 symphonic tone poem “A Night On Bald Mountain”). The album reached #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart for the week ending January 14, 1978, and stayed at #1 for twenty-six consecutive weeks, longer than any album since the 1962-63 success of the soundtrack for West Side Story (which had fifty-five non-consecutive weeks at #1). With thirty-seven million copies sold during its first year of release, it also remained the most successful album of all time, until Michael Jackson’s Thriller dethroned it in 1983-84.
While in actuality the disco genre’s shelf life was short (it was pretty much dead as an actual entity by 1983), the genre’s hits were still being played on radio stations all around; and the success of Saturday Night Fever, both in the cinema and on vinyl (and later CD as well), kept that flame alive. It would be ridiculous to say that Disco was ever a threat to rock and roll, as too many “Disco Sucks!” rock and roll fans has some believing in the late 1970’s; but this soundtrack recording is proof of how well this genre existed alongside FM rock during that period.