Bee Gees Album: “Their Greatest Hits: The Record [Australia Bonus Tracks]”

It is tough, tough, tough to quibble with the music here. "I've Gotta Get a Message to You", "Lonely Days" and "To Love Somebody" are essential listening. "How Deep Is Your Love", "Love So Right" and "Love You Inside Out" are more than just guilty pleasures, they're great tunes. The comp could be a little more expansive, giving us better and needed insight into the early and pre-1975 Bee Gees, such as "Mr. Natural" and "Morning of My Life". Not huge hits, but then not everything here is either. The new recordings of Gibb brother-penned tunes that were hits for others could *easily* be jettisoned in favor of the above mentioned tunes.

However, the biggest complaint with this set is undeniably its VOLUME LEVEL. In a futile effort to keep with industry "standards", the alleged mastering engineer raises the volume to ridiculous and unnecessarily loud levels. The dynamic range is literally compressed away, with excessive noise reduction applied to eliminate the resulting increased hiss. All of this overprocessing kills the "breath" in the mixes and life in the performances, resulting in a very unspectacular, one-dimensional listening experience. Give me tape hiss and natural volume peaks anyday over this. This music deserves better.

The Bee Gees (Brothers Gibb) have released several compilation albums; "Best of Bee Gees Vol 1", "Vol. 2" and "Bee Gees Greatest" which were primarily period pieces. Their "Tales..." Box Set was a complete and exhaustive collection of all of their hits and B-Sides plus some rarities, but only went to 1990. This collection is the first one to address ALL of their big singles including versions formerly only recorded by other artists.

In some cases, critics have arguable compared this to the "Beatles I" released last year. It's not far off. Containing no less than (19) #1 hits written by the Bee Gees and (11) of these recorded by them, it is an impressive set. None of the other songs fell below the Top 30 either in the USA or Europe; an excellent gauge to choose the best singles from well over 50 choices.

The Bee Gees own versions of hits recorded by others fare well enough, but lack the exhuberance of the originals. "Emotion" doesn't reach the heights of Samantha Sang's or Destiny's Child's versions and "Immortality", unfortunately sounds like a demo. Only "Islands In The Stream" really kicks in with Robin leading an R&B version of the song that proves it was originally intended as soul, not just Country.

However, if this is the worst one can find in this remarkable set of (40) songs, that is saying a lot. There is no better proof of the incredible songwriting and harmonizing talent the three Brothers exhibit so easily. This is sure to be a historic item in anyone's collection. Who knows. It may even outsell "Saturday Night Fever" (and it really ought to).

Trivia note: The European version of this collection has Barry Gibb singing the lead entry vocal on "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" and also includes the singles "My World" and "Jumbo" which were mysteriously omitted from the USA release.

If you're a die-hard Bee-Gee's fanatic and already have all of their original LP's on vinyl, 8-track, cassette and CD, this is probably the ablum for you, BUT for everyone else, there are at least TWO MAJOR SORE-SPOTS with this album:

"Emotion" - this remake isn't completely awful, but despite more than 20 years since I've heard the original, that was absolutely better.

"Islands in the Stream" - this remake-version is almost painful to listen to.

This album's got most of the great hits that I was really looking forward to (like "Guilty" with Barbara Streisand), but it's also got these recent remakes which make me want to commit hara-kiri on my inner ear organs. I wish some artists over 50 would show a little more respect for their younger, druggier, and better glory days.

I love old Bee Gees songs; and I have most of their old stuff on vinyl albums -- which means that I'm quite familiar with how these songs should sound. When I got this CD and started listening to it, something didn't sound right. After several songs, I was pretty sure that these weren't the original mixes; and I didn't like them nearly as much as the original ones. So I decided to come to Amazon.com and see if anybody had left any reviews that mentioned this sound mix problem. Sure enough, some people have. (I say all this to make it clear that I didn't read any of the negative reviews here first; and so my opinion upon first hearing the CD was not just influenced by those reviews.)

Some other reviewers mention that the problem is that the songs are remixed to make all parts louder, thereby compressing the dynamic range. I think that may be a fair assessment, because I do believe I notice that same effect. However, I also think the songs may have been sped up slightly, relative to the original mixes. I say this because everything seems a bit 'brighter' (i.e., more trebley) and 'peppier'. And therefore, the earlier songs seem to have lost a lot of that wonderful feeling of melancholy that I love so much.

There was one reviewer that tried to counter another person's comments about 'bad sound quality' by saying that that other person must have gotten a bootleg copy or something. I realize that the term 'bad sound quality' can quickly conjure up in one's mind the way that bootleg albums sound. But I don't think the critical reviewer had that type of 'bad sound quality' in mind. This CD definitely doesn't sound bad in that way. It's bright and crisp and not hissy, and sounds like it's had lots of meticulous studio engineering work done to it. If you had never heard the songs before, or if you weren't really familiar with them being played on a good component stereo system or a good set of headphones, this CD would probably strike you as being very well produced. The problem (in my opinion) is that this CD has had too much studio engineering done to it in ways that significantly alter the tone and feel of the songs from the original release versions.

In short, these songs are great songs; but don't buy this CD to get them. They dinked with the mixes so much on this CD that I still don't feel like I have a CD version of them.

What can I say? They are the Bee Gees afterall. Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb have been making great music for five decades and they are still a force in the music business in the 21st century. Although Maurice left us way too soon, I know that Barry and Robin will still continue to write great music for themselves and others. Barry Gibb is not just a song writer he is a poet. His lyrics make sense and they touch your heart. When most think of the Bee Gees they think Disco and Saturday Night Fever...how wrong they are just to limit this dynamic group to that era. I am only 38 years old and it wasn't until I turned 30 that I truly discovered who this group was and what they had done. They have forever changed the landscape of music. In one word, the Brothers Gibb are amazing.