The Bee Gees ruled the ’60s and ’70s, but listening back to their biggest hits to this day proves quickly just how timeless they are. But its 1978’s “Too Much Heaven” that manages to stand out in a sea of greatness thanks to a sweet message that all the world ought to hear, backed by those signature Bee Gees harmonies and some truly smooth, soulful background music. Listening to “Too Much Heaven” is like hearing a love letter to the idea of love itself, and the story behind that song is just as tender as the message they’re singing.
The family business that is the Bee Gees has always come straight from the heart, unfiltered by corporate middlemen, since brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb always wrote their own original material, and “Too Much Heaven” is the prime example of all their strengths, from songwriting to the hypnotic sound of Barry’s falsetto and Robin’s vibrato. The effect is a truly otherworldly listening experience, with layer upon layer of sounds playing on each other that all send our hearts soaring higher and higher with the music. All the while, this honey-sweet track beseeches our very souls to make sure that, in a hustle-and-bustle world, love never grows scarce.
The Disco Kings still reign supreme with “Too Much Heaven.”
You can’t rush the creative process, and “Too Much Heaven” was both the smoothest and longest track for the Bee Gees to work on. On the one hand, Barry, Robin, and Maurice managed to write this one up in just one afternoon while on break from the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie—oh, and along the way, they also jotted down “Tragedy” and later that night penned “Shadow Dancing.” The best things usually come in threes.
As for actually recording “Too Much Heaven,” that took a bit longer—the longest of all the tracks that ended up on their album Spirits Having Flown. Remember all those different layers happening at once? There’s a lot going on musically, and that gave the Bee Gees a lot of work to do; specifically, there were nine layers of three-part harmonies, making the song pretty much 27 voices.
“Too Much Heaven” sings about a difficult mountain climb and that’s pretty much what the song itself did when it was released in ’78, enjoying a slow but steady trek up to the top of the charts in the U.S. and U.K. But it served an even bigger purpose besides giving the Bee Gees yet another platinum-certified hit. They really practiced what they preached so harmoniously.
The song will always stand the test of time
The Bee Gees actually put all this together for the “Music for UNICEF” fund and performed it at the Music for UNICEF concert early in ’79. On top of that, every bit of publishing royalties went to UNICEF just in time for the International Year of the Child—that’s $7 million in funds raised to draw attention to the plight of kids around the world, from food instability to lack of education. A live performance of this magical track to help heal the whole world just a bit? That’s the stuff of dreams.
For their huge gift to UNICEF, the Bee Gees were invited to the White House and got personal thanks from President Jimmy Carter. It’s been over 40 years since the Bee Gees sang a love song addressed to the whole world, but we still can’t get enough. Fans have heard it hundreds of millions of times but will never get enough of this bit of heaven.
