“No, Not That One”: The Laughable Way the Bee Gees Wrote the 1977 Hit, “How Deep Is Your Love”

Songwriting as a solo artist can be difficult, but songwriting with a group of artists can feel almost impossible. Art, as its core, is entirely subjective. That means a great line to one person could be full-on cringe to another. Or, in the case of The Bee Gees’ 1977 hit, “How Deep Is Your Love”, one man’s “most beautiful chord he’s ever heard” is another man’s “uh…no, that one’s not very good.” So it goes.

Keyboardist Blue Weaver recalled the somewhat tedious writing process behind the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack addition. “One morning, it was just myself and Barry [Gibbs] in the studio,” Weaver recalled, per The Bee Gees: Tales of the Brothers Gibb. “He said, ‘Play the most beautiful chord you know.’ What happened was, I’d throw chords at home, and he’d say, ‘No, not that chord.’”

Oh…okay.

Capturing the Feel of “How Deep Is Your Love”

The idea of a musician asking another musician to play the chord they personally feel is the most beautiful chord and then saying, ‘No, not that one,’ is objectively laughable. Musicians. Still, Weaver and the rest of The Bee Gees were able to push through until they settled on a chord they all found the most beautiful.

“I’d keep moving around and [Barry Gibbs] would say, ‘Yeah, that’s a nice one.’ And we’d go from there,” Weaver wrote. “Then I’d play another thing. Sometimes, I’d be following the melody line that he already had. And sometimes I’d most probably lead him somewhere else by doing what I did. I think Robin [Gibbs] came in at some point.” Producer Albhy Galuten helped direct which chords should (and should not) be in inversion. “By the time Albhy had come in, the song was sort of there.”

That sort-of–there track was a massive success, climbing to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 on Christmas Day 1977, where it stayed in the Top 10 for just over four months. It remains a beloved part of The Bee Gees’ catalogue, which Robin attributes to its “universal appeal.”

“Not every song has it, but I think that one has, it’s either in the music itself or in the lyrics. But there is something about what someone says in a lyric that gives it automatic universal appeal every time you hear it. Personalities are examined in that tune, but female or male aren’t even mentioned in it. I think ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ is one of those sort of songs that you can hear over and over again and not get tired of for the same reasons.”

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