The Bee Gees - "You Win Again"

(Debuted September 19, 1987, Peaked #75, 6 Weeks on the Chart)

In 1987, there was nothing as seemingly "uncool" as certain 1970s music, and Disco was near the top of the list when it came to music that. And thanks to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, The Bee Gees were placed front and center on the "forbidden" playlist. However, I was the type of person who wasn't interested in what others told me I should  or shouldn't listen to, and like a renegade I gravitated to the music that others considered "awful." Part of it was the morbid curiosity that causes people to check out accident scenes, and part of it was the wonder of what was so bad about it that turned people off. For crying out loud, much of the music of the 1980s wasn't exactly high art, either.

In the process, I discovered that there was a lot from the previous decade worth listening to...and The Bee Gees enjoyed a long and fruitful career even before Saturday Night Fever. So, when the syndicated version of Top of the Pops that played on American TV at the time announced that the group was enjoying a resurgence and that their song "You Win Again" was the #1 song in the U.K., I waited to see how it did here.

I wasn't waiting long. Thanks to a local record store that posted the Hot 100 list every week, I watched as the song died after reaching #75. It seemed to be a hit everywhere else but in the U.S., and it was one of the first times I wondered if what they said about us Americans not being "with it" was true. It's a question I still ask myself from time to time.

In 1987, the U.S. was just unprepared for The Bee Gees. The eventual rennaisance came later, and when 1970s music was "in" again several years later, I was already immersed in it. And I was already proud to admit that I was a fan of the band's work.