#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: October 25, 1980 through November 8, 1980.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: November 4, 1980 through November 8, 1980.#1 on the U.K. Chart: October 25, 1980 through November 8, 1980.
Songs that reached number one on all three of the charts I track for the 1980s Project are few and far between. Woman in Love is only the third song to reach that mark in 1980, following Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) and Blondie's Call Me to that distinction. Needless to say, the song was a huge hit - in fact, this was the biggest hit of Streisand's career.
The note that makes the success of this song so very interesting is that it was written by Barry and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees. As I have noted before, by 1980, disco was "dead" in the sense that anything that was labeled as or associated with "disco" was widely loathed and despised, but at the same time, things that were "disco-like" that didn't have the disco name attached to them seemed to be as popular as disco had ever been. By the time Woman in Love was released, there is no way that anything released by the Bee Gees would have been regarded with anything but widespread derision, and yet a song written by the Bee Gees managed to top the Billboard, Cash Box, and U.K. Charts. When one listens to the song, you can hear the similarities between it and Bee Gees hits like How Deep Is Your Love, More Than a Woman, and Too Much Heaven, but had the Bee Gees themselves released this song, it almost certainly would have flopped. Everyone, it seems, wanted to listen to music that sounded like the Bee Gees, just not music performed by the Bee Gees.
On a side note, Streisand apparently doesn't like this song much. Despite it being her most commercially successful single, she has performed it live only rarely, and has said that she doesn't agree with the message of the song. Perhaps the root of her distaste for the song is that it is a song about a woman declaring her perpetual love for someone that was written by two men. This is a woman's perspective as rendered from a male creator, and as a result it probably rings false to a lot of women, including Streisand.
Previous Musical Monday: Don't Stand So Close to Me by the Police
Subsequent Musical Monday: The Tide Is High by Blondie
Previous #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Another One Bites the Dust by Queen
Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Lady by Kenny Rogers
Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Another One Bites the Dust by Queen
Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Lady by Kenny Rogers
Previous #1 on the U.K. Chart: Don't Stand So Close to Me by the Police
Subsequent #1 on the U.K. Chart: The Tide Is High by Blondie
List of #1 Singles from the Billboard Hot 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles from the Cash Box Top 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles on the U.K. Chart for 1980-1989
Barbra Streisand 1980s Project Musical Monday Home
No comments:
Post a Comment