Stayin Alive Lyrics

Stayin Alive Lyrics and Video by The Bee Gees

(scroll down to listen to the song on video)

Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk,
I’m a woman’s man: no time to talk.
Music loud and women warm, I’ve been kicked around
Since I was born.
And now it’s all right. It’s OK.
And you may look the other way.
We can try to understand
The New York Times’ effect on man.

Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother,
You’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’,
And we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive.

Well now, I get low and I get high,
And if I can’t get either, I really try.
Got the wings of heaven on my shoes.
I’m a dancin’ man and I just can’t lose.
You know it’s all right. It’s OK.
I’ll live to see another day.
We can try to understand
The New York Times’ effect on man.

Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother,
You’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’,
And we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive.

Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me.
Somebody help me, yeah.
Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me, yeah.
Stayin’ alive.

Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk,
I’m a woman’s man: no time to talk.
Music loud and women warm,
I’ve been kicked around since I was born.
And now it’s all right. It’s OK.
And you may look the other way.
We can try to understand
The New York Times’ effect on man.

Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother,
You’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’,
And we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive.

Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me.
Somebody help me, yeah.
Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me, yeah.
I’m stayin’ alive.

Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me.
Somebody help me, yeah.
Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me, yeah.
I’m stayin’ alive.

Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me.
Somebody help me, yeah.
Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me, yeah.
I’m stayin’ alive.

Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me.
Somebody help me, yeah.
Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me, yeah.
I’m stayin’ alive.

 

Enjoy This Video of Stayin Alive Lyrics Sung by the Bee Gees

The Story Behind Stayin Alive Lyrics and the Bee Gees

“Stayin’ Alive” is a disco song by the group Bee Gees from the Saturday Night Fever motion picture soundtrack. The Stayin Alive lyrics were written by the Bee Gees (Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb) and produced by the Bee Gees, Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson. It was released on 13 December 1977, as the second single from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. It is one of their signature songs. In 2004, “Stayin’ Alive” was placed at number 189 on the list of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Upon release, “Stayin’ Alive” climbed the charts to hit the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 the week of 4 February 1978, remaining there for four weeks. In the process, it became one of the band’s most recognisable tunes, in part because of its place at the beginning of Saturday Night Fever.

Recording “Stayin’ Alive” was not simple. Engineer Karl Richardson copied a choice few seconds of drumming from “Night Fever”, cut out the piece of tape and glued the ends together, then fed it back into a recorder by a makeshift arrangement to create a new drum track. Drummer Dennis Bryon did not attend the recording of “Stayin’ Alive”. This track was finished at Criteria Studios, with Maurice laid down a bass line like Betty Wright’s “Clean Up Woman”, Barry and Alan on guitar riffs, while Blue Weaver added synthesizers, and the Boneroo Horns added their parts. Barry sings falsetto on the whole song, except on the line “life’s going nowhere, somebody help me”.

Albhy Galuten talks about the recording of “Stayin’ Alive”:

Barry and I listened carefully to find a bar that felt really good. Everyone knows that it’s more about feel than accuracy in drum tracks. We chose a bar that felt so good that we ended up using that same loop on ‘Stayin’ Alive,’ and ‘More Than a Woman,’ and then again on Barbra Streisand’s song ‘Woman in Love.’ To make the loop, we copied the drums onto one-quarter-inch tape. Karl spliced the tape and jury rigged it so that it was going over a mic stand and around a plastic reel. At first, we were doing it just as a temporary measure. As we started to lay tracks down to it, we found that it felt really great-very insistent but not machinelike. It had a human feel. By the time we had overdubbed all the parts to the songs and Dennis came back, there was no way we could get rid of the loop.

In their work together, Gibb and Galuten had tried playing with click tracks as Galuten explained:

While today’s musicians know how to get a good groove with the click, back then, if you used a click track you rarely got a good feel. The loop crossed the boundary giving us music that was in time with a good feel. If I had been working for a technology company then and knew what I was doing, I would have tried to patent the idea. Nonetheless, it changed a lot of things. That first loop was a watershed event in our life and times.

“Stayin’ Alive” was used in a study to train medical professionals to provide the correct number of chest compressions per minute while performing CPR. The song has close to 104 beats per minute, and 100-120 chest compressions per minute are recommended by the British Heart Foundation, and endorsed by the Resuscitation Council (UK). A study on medical professionals found that the quality of CPR is better when thinking about “Stayin’ Alive”. This was parodied in the season 5 episode of comedy series The Office “Stress Relief”.

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