"Stayin' Alive" is a song written and performed by the Bee Gees from the Saturday Night Fever motion picture soundtrack. The song was released in December 1977 by RSO Records as the second single from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The band wrote the song and co-produced it with Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson. It is one of the Bee Gees' signature songs. In 2004, "Stayin' Alive" was placed at No. 189 by Rolling Stone on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
On its release, "Stayin' Alive" climbed the charts to hit the number one spot on the US Billboard Hot 100 the week of 4 February 1978, remaining there for four consecutive weeks. Consequently, it became one of the band's most recognisable tunes, partly because it appeared in the opening credits of Saturday Night Fever. In the United States, it would become the second of the Bee Gees' six consecutive number-one singles, tying the record with the Beatles for most consecutive number-ones in the United States at the time (a record broken by Whitney Houston who achieved seven consecutive number-ones).
In 1979, at the 21st Annual Grammy Awards, "Stayin' Alive" won the award for Grammy Award for Best Vocal Arrangement for Two or More Voices, alongside 3 other wins at that ceremony, including Album of The Year.
Writing and recording
The executive producer of the Saturday Night Fever motion picture soundtrack and Bee Gees manager Robert Stigwood asked the band to write a few songs for the soundtrack. At this point, the film was in early stages and it did not have a title; in fact, all Stigwood had to go on was a New York cover story about discomania.
They wrote "Stayin' Alive" over the course of a few days while sprawled on the staircase at the Château d'Hérouville studio near Paris. As with many other artists during the 1970s, the Bee Gees recorded most of the soundtrack in France for tax reasons.
RSO Records wanted the song to share the then-title of the film, "Saturday Night", but the Bee Gees refused a title change, insisting that there had been too many songs with "Saturday" in the title, and the album already had a song with the word "night" in the title—"Night Fever". "We'd also written a song called 'Saturday Night'", Maurice explains, "But there were so many songs called 'Saturday Night' even one by the Bay City Rollers, so when we rewrote it for the movie, we called it 'Stayin' Alive'." Rather than insist the Bee Gees change "Stayin' Alive" to match the film's original title, Stigwood renamed the movie from "Saturday Night" to "Saturday Night Fever," connecting it to their song "Night Fever" instead.
Robin Gibb recalls, "The subject matter of 'Stayin' Alive' is actually quite a serious one; It's about survival in the streets of New York, and the lyrics actually say that". Barry Gibb reflects, "Everybody struggles against the world, fighting all the bullshit and things that can drag you down. And it really is a victory just to survive. But when you climb back on top and win bigger than ever before, well that's something everybody reacts to everybody".
Over the years, the brothers have had mixed feelings about the song, admitting it brought them tremendous fame but conversely branded them as a disco act, despite a long and varied career before and after.
Albhy Galuten talks about the recording of "Stayin' Alive":
In their work together, Gibb and Galuten had tried playing with a click track as Galuten explained: