There is very, very little disco music that made our list of the Top 500 albums, or even of the Alternative Top 40 albums.

Naturally, you might be led to presume that this is due to a prejudice on my part, but the truth is that disco never really embraced the album format. It was nightclub music, made for dancing, and disco thrived on the idea of 12” singles rather than long players, records that could hold extended mixes for DJ’s to have a variety of options regarding which version of a song they played to keep the crowd dancing, and to present a playlist that sounded original and different from the mainstream versions that were played on the radio.

Disco simply was unfriendly to the album format, so there is precious little disco music that makes my list of great albums. That being said, the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack was such a colossal success that it was ubiquitous and remained so for a half decade or more. Being first in its class meant something and the Bee Gees found themselves on the cusp of an entirely new genre.  After a serious decline in their popularity, the brothers literally reidentified themselves as a full bore, falsetto-laden disco group. and it worked beyond anyone’s imagination.

The soundtrack itself is actually pretty sketchy, with a significant number of weak spots and filler, but each and every Bee Gees track resonated with a spirit that literally redefined a large portion of the music scene. From this point on, pop music would be segregated into deeply divisionary formats that either pulled the listener in or appalled them. Welcome to the ‘new’ normal.

Featured Tracks:

Stayin Alive - The Bee Gees

How Deep is Your Love - The Bee Gees

Night Fever - The Bee Gees

More Than a Woman - The Bee Gees

If I Can't Have You - Yvonne Elliman

A Fifth of Beethoven - Walter Murphy

More Than a Woman - Tavares

Manhattan Skyline - David Shire

Calypso Breakdown - Ralph MacDonald