Samantha Sang… or did she? Or was it Barry Gibb in drag trying to get more of his songs on the radio? The Bee Gees were sure a-flush with hit records in the late 70s and they couldn’t record hem all. So they started handing them out to everyone they knew, like Halloween candy. Doing the music for a soundtrack is a great way to do that. Then it literally all exploded at once: The Bee Gees, their brother Andy, Yvonne Elliman, and Samantha all clogged up the airwaves with Gibb tunes. It felt like every song you heard on the radio in 1978 was a Bee Gees tune. And that illusion was kept by recordings like this one, where the Gibb’s background vocals overtake Samantha’s wispy Barry-like voice.
Man did we play the hell out of this one in my house. I loved looking at the label on the 45 cause it had the Brooklyn Bridge on the right side of the spindle hole and the Twin Towers on the left side. I was certain they recorded that song in NY, in my backyard, so to speak. But alas the native Australian recorded it down in Miami where the Bee Gees were recorded most of their output from 1974 on.
Supposedly Samantha asked Barry, whom she had already worked with, to write her a song. This was during the Saturday Night Fever sessions. Barry sneezed and out came Our Love (Don’t Throw It All Away) and Emotion. Samantha said she cried the first time she heard it. Barry said ‘cool, take it’ and I’ll give the other one to Andy. [Both hit the Top 10 in 1978]. Barry eventually produced it with his team of Karl Richardson and my favorite name, Albhy Galuten (who also produced both albums of one of my favorite bands, Jellyfish) BOOM…hit! Gibb recordings would go on to hog the charts and in early April they owned half of the Top 10. How Beatlesque, esp for band that many thought were a lesser version of the Beatles when they started.
Samantha never had any more hits and went back to Australia and through darts a poster of Beyonce when she heard Destinys Child’s awful 2001 remake.
Side note: Why does Beyonce always sound like she’s recording under a glass bell jar while submerged in freezing water?
7 Inches of 70s Pop 
W.B.
/ March 10, 2015Beyonce doesn’t sing a song so much as she declaims it, like making a Big Statement about something when she’s “singing” about nothing at all. In that sense she is the polar opposite of Celine Dion who doesn’t sing so much as upholster a song. Beyonce is also the epitome of “shallow soul” which is all about the bling and not much else – the exact opposite of what many Brits call “deep soul.”
B.T.W., I’m in agreement about Ms. Sang’s recording of “Emotion” being the definitive one.
macsnafu
/ February 28, 2023Australian, was she? Well that fits, considering that her voice sounds like a softer version of Helen Reddy.