Day 320: Various Artists – Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack

Reader, I feel jolly today. I’ve had a pretty nice week and it’s a pretty nice day, and it’s finally the weekend, so it’s time for a disco shower before I go and enjoy a beer. Today I thought I’d listen to quite possibly the heaviest of all the heavy hitters in the disco category: the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever.

Album cover courtesy of RSO Records

I fairly often google the best disco album on Disco Fridays, and this one comes up almost every single place where I look. And with good reason: before Michael Jackson released Thriller, this was the best-selling album of all time. It was certified 16 times platinum and has sold more than 40 million copies, and it’s in the Library of Congress for being so culturally significant.

The album kicks off with four classic songs by the Bee Gees, including "Night Fever," "How Deep Is Your Love?", “More than a Woman” and their iconic hit “Stayin’ Alive”, which was apparently originally called Saturday Night, but there were too many songs of that name so they changed it up a little. The Bee Gees originally said they were too busy to write any songs for the film, but they relented after their manager pestered them for it, so they wrote the songs in one weekend.

The rest of the soundtrack consists of various acts like Kool & the Gang, KC and the Sunshine Band and Tavares, along with the somewhat Hooked on Classics-esque “A Fifth of Beethoven”, all of which are certified bangers. Some random reddit commenter that I encountered when googling people’s favourite disco albums said that while it’s not their favourite, this is the album they’d play to an alien who asked them to explain what disco it, and I agree – it’s like the quintessential overview of the genre.

Also, as far as simultaneously fantastic and dumb opening lines to songs go, “Stayin’ Alive” and its opener “Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk / I'm a woman's man, no time to talk” is quite possibly the greatest of all time. “As you can see I am a shagger and therefore I’m busy, don’t talk to me” is iconic and I tip my hat to the Gibb brothers because that’s nothing if not bravado at its finest.

If I can also just quickly talk about this because I’ve been itching to rant ever since I actually watched Saturday Night Fever: here I thought it’d be a fun ‘80s dance film a la Flashdance or something, what the hell was up with that ending? Why does this film have such a jolly-sounding disco-dancing fun time reputation? I expected a nice time and then it ends with (please stop reading if you don’t want spoilers) gang rape and suicide. I was not prepared for that, I just wanted to watch Travolta boogie. Whenever this film came up, no one ever told me “watch out, it’s pretty harrowing actually.” False advertising I think.

But anyway. The soundtrack to this film is like a perfect little overview of what makes disco so great, and its got some absolute classics on it. It’s a strong 9/10, best enjoyed without remembering what actually happened in the film.