One - Part 1

Well, first of all, the idea of one is, it just really means unity.

It means that we're one, the three of us.

It doesn't mean a number or anything like that, or that we intend to get to number one, or we're going to try and get to number one.

It just means that we're unified.

And secondly, the album is dedicated to Andy.

I wanted to go to number

one.

Well, it would be nice.

We wouldn't complain.

Yes.

But the album

is dedicated to our brother Andy.

Well that's a very personal and quite sensitive subject to dedicate publicly an album to somebody who is dead, so why may you decide to do that? Well, I think it's obvious.

Because

he's our brother firstly, which is a very important

reason.

The other very important reason is that he was supposed to be with us on this album.

He was supposed to actually join us for this album.

And I think thirdly, he was very young when he died, which is

tragic.

And it's a year from now, so it's not quite as difficult for us to deal with.

Still difficult nevertheless.

We can

deal with

it now in a more positive light.

Yeah.

Hello and welcome back to Words, the Bee Gees podcast.

I'm Cristiano.

And I'm Stuart.

And in today's episode, we're going to be talking about One, the Bee Gees album from 1989, released in April in the UK and in July in the US through Warner Brothers.

Quite a big gap, isn't it?

Yeah, and there's a few differences between the UK and the US versions of this album, mostly with the track listing.

Well, it's 89 now, we're getting into the CD

era.

They're obviously wanting to promote CDs rather than vinyl.

On the UK version, you've got Wing and a Prayer, which was the bonus track.

Whereas the US, Wing and a Prayer doesn't appear on the CD at all.

They've decided then to try and rehash or try and hope to get a bit of chart success with You Win Again.

Whether they promoted it properly in the first place is another thing.

On the US version, they changed the order.

So the album starts with one, goes into Ordinary Lives, whereas on the UK, it's vice versa.

It starts with Ordinary Lives and goes into one.

Do you have a preference? On the UK, it's what I'm used to, isn't it? Going into Ordinary Lives, I'm used to it that way.

But as we'll go further on, I actually do prefer the song Want than Ordinary Lives.

Okay.

Yeah, I prefer the UK version, if only for getting Winging a Prayer on the album and not rehashing You Win Again.

So it's going to be the UK track listing that we're going to be basing these episodes on.

But the one thing that really struck me when doing the research for One is that this is a very US geared album.

I think it's an album that was tailor made probably through Warner Brothers trying to make the Bee Gees a real big hit in the US again.

This is an album that was tailor made for the US market in the way that it sounds, in the way that it was promoted.

So before we get things going, to get into the 1989 spirit, instead of taking the UK top 10, I've had a look at the US chart listing.

And this is from the Billboard 15th of July charts.