"Stayin' Alive" is a song written and performed by the Bee Gees from the Saturday Night Fever motion picture soundtrack. The song was released in 1977 as the second single from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The band co-produced the song with Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson. It is one of the Bee Gees' signature songs. In 2004, "Stayin' Alive" was placed at No. 189 on the list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The 2021 updated Rolling Stone list of 500 Greatest Songs placed "Stayin' Alive" at No. 99. In 2004, it ranked No. 9 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. In a UK television poll on ITV in December 2011 it was voted fifth in "The Nation's Favourite Bee Gees Song".
On its 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 consecutive weeks. Consequently, it became one of the band's most recognisable tunes, partly because it appeared in the opening credits of Saturday Night Fever. In the United States, it would become the second of six consecutive number-one singles, tying the record with the Beatles for most consecutive number ones in the United States at the time (a record broken by Whitney Houston who achieved seven consecutive number-ones).
The executive producer of the Saturday Night Fever motion picture soundtrack and Bee Gees manager Robert Stigwood asked the band to write a few songs for the soundtrack. At this point, the film was in early stages and it did not have a title; in fact, all Stigwood had to go on was a New York cover story about discomania.
They wrote "Stayin' Alive" over the course of a few days while sprawled on the staircase at the Château d'Hérouville studio near Paris. As with many other artists during the 1970s, the Bee Gees recorded most of the soundtrack in France for tax reasons.
RSO Records wanted the song to share the then-title of the film, "Saturday Night", but the Bee Gees refused a title change, insisting that there had been too many songs with "Saturday" in the title, and the album already had a song with the word "night" in the title—"Night Fever". Rather than change the name of the former song to match the film, Stigwood expanded the name of the film to encompass the title of the latter song. Over the years, the brothers have had mixed feelings about the song, admitting it brought them tremendous fame but conversely branded them as a disco act, despite a long and varied career before and after.
Several words from Robin Gibb's Concorde ticket inspired the Gibbs[clarification needed] to write the lyrics for "Stayin' Alive". Robin recalls, "The subject matter of 'Stayin' Alive' is actually quite a serious one; It's about survival in the streets of New York, and the lyrics actually say that". Barry Gibb also recalls, "People crying out for help. Desperate songs. Those are the ones that become giants. The minute you capture that on record, it's gold. 'Stayin' Alive' is the epitome of that. Everybody struggles against the world, fighting all the bullshit and things that can drag you down. And it really is a victory just to survive. But when you climb back on top and win bigger than ever before, well that's something everybody reacts to everybody". "We'd also written a song called 'Saturday Night'", Maurice explains, "But there were so many songs called 'Saturday Night' even one by the Bay City Rollers, so when we rewrote it for the movie, we called it 'Stayin' Alive'.
The track was finished at Criteria Studios, with Maurice Gibb laying down a bass line similar to the guitar riff, Barry Gibb and Alan Kendall on guitar riffs, and Blue Weaver adding synthesizers. The Boneroo Horns parts were added. Barry sings falsetto on the whole song, except on the line "life's going nowhere, somebody help me".
The band's drummer Dennis Bryon left the recording sessions early due to the death of his mother, and the group first looked for a replacement. The shortage of qualified drummers in the area prompted the group to try a drum machine, but it did not offer satisfactory results. After listening to the drum track of the already-recorded "Night Fever", the group and producer Albhy Galuten took two bars from that track, rerecorded them as a recurrent loop on a separate tape (creating the song's constant rhythm), and proceeded with sessions for "Stayin' Alive". The group jokingly listed the drummer as "Bernard Lupe" (a takeoff on session drummer Bernard Purdie). Lupe became a highly sought-after drummer—until it was discovered that he did not exist.
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