What went wrong? Their early stuff was so good...

They went disco because that's where the money was

>>70025368
They were making decent money before that. They even had a couple top 10 singles in the U.S. and Australia. (Hell they even had a couple #1s)

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>>70025425

The style of their old music went out of fashion so they had to move on to something different

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>>70025531
Which makes me very sad.

Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You sounds like an REM song from the 80's - if you take all the weird (and crappy) psychedelic parts out, it really sounds quite modern for 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KzkIQonfk8

I think they did some of the best disco, so I don't think they really went quite as wrong as some other groups like the Commodores

>>70025616
>if you take all the weird (and crappy) psychedelic parts out
>psychedelic
>crappy

Pick one.

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Two Years On [Atco, 1971]

This is a little better than the LPs the Gibb brothers came up with during their separation--Cucumber Castle, which at least sold some, and the solo flop Robin's Reign. It does include a bizarre juxtaposition of Jerry Reed imitation and singing strings. But "Lonely Days" sounded more distinctive on the radio than it does among its epigones here--the collective vibrato is turning into a grating affectation. Presumably they broke up because they sensed that the formula was getting stale. To try to re-create it yet again is to guarantee the transformation from good commercial group to bad one. C-

Best of Bee Gees Vol. 2 [RSO, 1973]

What a pathetic comedown--the melodies soggy, the harmonies strained, the lyrics deadly dull. Fifteen songs plus lyric sheet means they're really trying to sell it, too. It'd be a better deal if as many had been hits as the notes imply. I count four top-twenty in four years, which oddly enough is also how many good songs I count, and I'm being lenient. C+

Main Course [RSO, 1975]

I find myself slightly put off by the commercial desperation that has compelled these chronic fatuousos to put out their brightest album in years. The message it sends is not that they need to tell me this stuff, but that it's the only way they can sell albums in 1975. C+

Spirits Having Flown [RSO, 1979]

I must admit, I admire the perverse riskiness of this music, which trades disco bounce for demented falsetto abstractions, less love man than newborn kitten. And I also admit to being genuinely fond of the many small moments of madness such as how the three multitracked voices echo the phrase "living together". But obsessive ornamentation can't transform a curiosity into inhabitable music, and there's not one song here that equals any on the first side of "Saturday Night Fever". C+

>>70026210
See?

He only gave the disco stuff C's.

Only more proof not to buy anything made after 1972.

>>70026232
They're all Cs. Although actually the review of Main Course I posted was his original one from '75, the review in "Consumer Guide to the '70s" was more favorable and upped the album to a B+.

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>>70026295
>upped the album to a B+.
>Complimenting Post-72 Bee Gees.

Second review. Christgau did revise his ratings on some albums over the years.

Main Course [RSO, 1975]

At first I was put off by the commercial desperation that induced these chronic fatuosos to turn out their brightest album in many years. But commercial success validated it: "Nights on Broadway" and "Jive Talkin'" turned out to be the kind of fluff that sticks. Sad to say, an unpleasant tension between feigned soulfulness and transparent insincerity still mars most of side two, which does, however, lead off with an undiscovered gem: "All This Making Love," a baroque, frantically mechanical evocation of compulsive sex. B+

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>>70026372
>HE'S COMPLIMENTING DISCO BEEGEES

>>70026382
Main Course wasn't yet disco, more like R&B. Disco started coming in on the next album (Children of the World).

Also Christgau said in his review of Barbra Streisand's "Guilty" (collab with the Bee Gees) that they used to write great love ballads, but after years of pop/disco, had lost their ability to do that.

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>>70026407
>Not only listening to Baroque-Beegees.

>>70024259
But their disco stuff is fine OP. As far as straight white boi disco-pop goes it's pretty good.

>>70026456
SEE? PROOF!

>>70026456
>Christgau said
lol who gives a shit what that hack says.

>>70026532
I use to not care, but then he complimented early Bee Gees and now I think he's the best critic ever.

Man, talk about a group that were so pigeonholed with the 70s/disco that they literally got banned from the radio in the US for many years.

>>70026564
I'd say it's Karma for not doing Baroque anymore.