Odessa

I really tried

This album is either the result of hubris or insecurity. Either the Bee Gees thought, we are the fucking Bee Gees, we can do anything. Or they thought: we’re the Bee Gees and no one takes us seriously so let’s pretend we’re thoughtful artistes and then we’ll finally get some respect. Either way, while this has a few worthwhile moments, it’s mostly pretty sad.

Слишком пафосный и возвышенный поп с элементами блюза. Некоторые треки сгодились бы для саундтреков

I was expecting the falsetto from "Stayin Alive" so imagine my surprise when he sang normally!

An orchestral pop double album from the 1969 Bee Gees? The closest thing to good is a poor man's CCR driving song (Marley Purt Drive) and there is a lot of long cheesy musical hall stuff like the bad prospective echoes of McCartney solo crap (Melody Fair) and the schmaltz of First of May. An ungainly sprawling self-important mess.

Some kind of misbegotten rock—and classical!—opera with psychedelic and soft rock and country thrown into the mix. Actually one of the country songs is good. But I cannot fathom what the point of the whole was.

1 - Odessa (City On The Black Sea) - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 2 - You’ll Never See My Face Again - 👏 3 - Black Diamond - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 4 - Marley Purt Drive -👍 5 - Edison - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 6 - Melody Fair - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 7 - Suddenly - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 8 - Whisper Whisper - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 9 - Lamplight - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 10 - Sound Of Love - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 11 - Give Your Best - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 12 - Seven Seas Symphony - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 13 - With All Nations (International Anthem) - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 14 - I Laugh In Your Face -🤷🏻‍♂️ 15 - Never Say Never Again -🤷🏻‍♂️ 16 - First Of May - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 17 - The British Opera - 🤷🏻‍♂️ 1/5

It's pleasant enough, but oh so boring.

Pretty good album, I enjoyed more than I expected. Very Beatles-y. Hard to realize how long The Bee Gees were around and how big they were. This album is again very late 60’s Beatles influenced, and a lot different than what I was more familiar with from the group in the 70’s. 3.5

had like 3 good tracks

I can't say that I cared much about it. It's too long and has too much filler.

A gently psychedelic piece orchestral pop. It’s not bad but it drags a bit at times.

Not really my thing.

Another double album! Seems too indebted to contemporary styles and esp Paul McCartney.

Not their best but I do love the Beegees

Its the Bee Gees

Guess I'm in a good mood, this was a really good album. Good mix of vocals and styles. It didn't feel too long at all.

Dear everyone: If you believe that you and/or your band should release a double album, don't do it. I'm somewhere in the 500's at this point in the project, have gotten at least a dozen double albums, and exactly zero shouldn't be cut down to a single album. Or less. This album specifically is . . . just boring. The Bee Gees should be on the list, but stick with the disco and the hits.

I wasn't expecting to like this, knowing it's from before their disco era and not a hugely popular album. However a few songs in I realised I'd heard this as a kid at my Nan's and got a bit emotional. It's not great, Beatles-esque, with some bad tracks, but it's nice.

Unparalleled harmonies and melodies but the lyrics haven’t aged well and it didn’t need to be a double album.

How many more Bee Gees albums are we gonna do??? This one, was not for me.

meh

okay bee gees

I was blown away- an epic, sweet, gorgeous album from a group I had associated with fluffy haired disco. Warrants 1000 repeated listens.

I was surprised to learn that before the Bee Gees were conquering every fashionista on the dance floor with tracks like "Stayin' Alive," they were a folk-oriented vocal-instrumental group. They conceived this album as their magnum opus; you can sense the megalomania the moment you pick up the record, which comes housed in a red velvet-textured sleeve. The music itself sounds like the kind played at formal dinner parties — the sort that makes you feel profoundly uncomfortable. It is an incredibly pompous, grand-scale album with lavish arrangements, created primarily to declare: "Look what we can do! We’re just as good as The Beatles or The Beach Boys." It didn’t work — the sheer grandeur, combined with a glacial, turtle-like pace, becomes tiresome quite quickly. And, to make matters worse, it’s a double album, so you’re forced to endure it. Thank heavens that, a few years later, disco would arrive to pull the band out of this quagmire.

My mind kinda wandered on this a bit ,but it sounded good feeling between a 3 or 3.5. It’s an album That seems like a grower to live and breathe it. The singing is obviously amazing. Being a double album as stated above Might need couple plays to see which songs stick out more. 3/5 for now.

Why is this on the list? Was it a hit somewhere? I have the utmost respect for the Bee Gees, but this just played out like a disjointed mess. Some folk-rock, some classical, some wanna-be show tunes? I would take any of their mid-70s output over this one.

I absolutely love the Bee Gees. First of all I am shocked that this list contains none of their disco era albums ... none! I appreciate the pre-disco material, but it is nothing I would go back and re-listen to. Odessa is an odd album. It's long and the songs are just not that great. I think the 1,001 list got it wrong when it came time to choose what Bee Gees albums to include.

Good and LONG

Not for me, Clive

Good grief—even though there wasn't the piercing singing of a castrato to be heard, this album still falls into the "unbearable" category. 1/5

Better than the Trafalgar album I had to put up with a few months ago. 3 out of 5. Favorite tracks: Odessa ; Melody Fair

Meh

What the fuck was that? Did it really need to be so long? I actually enjoyed some of the tracks in a vacuum, but overall it was way too pretentious. 2.5* rounded down to 2*

This is entirely unexpected vs. what I knew of the BeeGees. I love some good vocal harmonies. Marley purt drive and give your best were straight-up country? I guess it's on brand for the album. The harmonies were impeccable, which bumped this up from meh to 4*. Highlights: odessa, seven seas symphony

Started having maybe some interesting ideas and then devolved in self indulgence

Hey that was pretty good….the ending kinda made me want to cry. it was very cinematic and felt like the height of an old movie. *Fav tracks: Suddenly; Lamplight*

This wouldn't be here if they hadn't shifted up an octave five years later, but still interesting to hear late 60s pop trying to be serious.

I get it right, Bee Gees before they were doing the high pitched thing! It's slightly less naff than what we would come to think in later times. However, that reedy vibratto is ever-present still, and idk, it is still pretty naff just at a lower octave. That being said... it does feel like a different band completely which is interesting but just like that band isn't necessarily amazing. They're still not genuises... genui-i...SMART HOLE

Must say I wasn't too excited about listening to the Bee Gees - just ain't for me really - but then they open with a bonkers expositionary piece about how it's a concept album about the loss of a fictional ship in 1899 and I'm back on board. Then I'm lost again, I struggle with these bloated late 60s rock operas tbh, needs a lot more whimsy about shipwrecks if it's gonna work for me sorry, not just endless sprawling mid-tempo country-ish ballads. Sometimes it starts to sound just a tiny bit like a slow Abba song but not as good. Maybe if I listened several times and with close attention I'd get it, but TIME IS MONEY so I can't.

I am awed that this album exists. I always thought of the Bee Gees as the falsetto guys, the Saturday Night Fever guys, the guys who ask you how deep your love is. You would never in a million years think those guys could be behind something like Odessa, and yet it is so unmistakably Bee Gees. Odessa is very ambitious, very self-important, very broad, very peculiar. Concept albums essentially are hit or miss, either you are taken by their magic or you just aren’t, and I think I was. Where the shipwreck that inspired the album got lost, there seemed to be a careful spritz of atmosphere to pull one back to the sense of loss and forlorn longing that defined this album. And there are moments where one gets lost: “Give Your Best” sounds like the gentlemen hired the Beatles to record a track for them in the worst way possible. But in aggregate, this is an album that is worth hearing, impressive even, and one of the most listenable double albums I’ve heard.

i got a bit bored but i will give one more chance later

Yet another pre-disco Bee Gees album. Enough.

641/1089 - zZz... zZz... this one makes an hour feel like a day

Good grief, a double album of this is a bit too much. It all sounds a bit bland.

Wat eentonig, wel mooie stemmen

Ik vond het laatste deel HEEL leuk

Very cinematic for '69. It's fun to hear them before they found their very signature style.

Man, was this insipid. 2/10

It’s not bad but it is a bit long.

no

Forgettable late 60s drivel.

pass

Pretty decent

Did not see that coming

Una de las mejores bandas de la historia, así de simple. Son la única banda en poseer un premio Grammy Legend. Con una calidad compositora y vocal difícil de igualar. También es cierto que eran muy cerrados y amigos de culpar a los demás de sus propios errores. Aunque se puede justificar en parte por la salvaje persecución que tuvieron que soportar (Disco Sucks y los Bee Gee Free Weekends) por culpa de haber dominado completamente el universo musical en los años 78-79. Su mejor disco, para mi gusto es Bee Gees first ( que no es su debut, sino un disco precioso de pop barroco). Luego Horizontal o Idea siguieron por ese sonido magestuoso que alcanza su cénit aquí en el doble Odessa. Con Cucumber castle parecía que llegaban a su fin pero resurgieron con Trafalgar y To Whom it may concern para luego reinvetarse con Main Course y despegar con la fiebre del sábado noche hasta Spirits Having Flown. Luego el ostracismo debido a la sobreexposición (algo similar le pasó a Madonna con Erotica) y tener que componer para otros por haber perdido el favor del público. Odessa (City on the Black Sea) es una maravillosa introducción. Marley Purt Drive suena a lo que serán The band, Edison y Marley Purt Drive son golosinas que podrían firmar los Beatles. Whisper Whisper también. Give your best tiene un toque country sin perder su esencia Bee Gees.

I was looking forward to hearing some of their non disco era songs because I had heard good things about them but I was disappointed. It felt a little bland but the first song is weird and interesting then it was just straight pop

Some stream of consciousness notes I took while I was listening: I do love a good concept album, and was disappointed that the title track is really the only one overtly about a shipwreck. But a lot of the songs afterwards have a lonely-person-lost-at-sea-contemplating-life vibe, so that's cool. Favorites: Odessa (City on the Black Sea) (it's like 8 songs in one! And most of them are weird and very good), You'll Never See My Face Again, Black Diamond, Never Say Never Again "Marley Port Drive" - sounds like The Band; would be a good country song by anyone "Melody Fair" and "Whisper Whisper" - sound like the Beatles ("Melody Fair" is especially psychedelic) "Give Your Best" is quirky - also a little Beatles-y, but with banjo and fiddle? Not sure what the three symphonic pieces are doing on this album, but it already has psychedelic rock, proto prog-rock, sea shanties (lite), country, and pop, so why not I guess?

These guys give me the heebie beegees

전체적으로 조용한 느낌이었고, 평범한 느낌이었다. Overall, it had a quiet and ordinary feel.

2.5

Actually not half bad. Biggest problem is that it doesn't need to be a double LP, one hour fest. Obviously they experimented to see what sticks, and the veil of a concept album masks that, but I kinda wish they stuck with one sound and rode it. Like maybe progressive pop/rock, or the rootsier side.

Definitely not the Bee Gees album I was expecting. It's not horrible, it's kind of Rennaissancy and is heavily influenced by the Beatles. I liked the second half of this album much better than the first half.

2:5

I enjoyed this! Not what I expected from Bee Gees.

Deux ou trois bons morceaux

Good to see their range, but kinda miss the disco vibes!

Woah, who knew the Bee Gees were more than those couple of tracks? Look, it's obvious what they were listening to at the time and that they're far inferior to eg Beatles and Beach Boys. But I'll give it a fuckin A for effort and an extra star. In any case, better than Pink fucking Floyd.

So, the only halfway decent song rips off "The Weight" ok? Nah, this was overlong, overblown, and I really didn't find much that I truly enjoyed listening to here. When I'm between rankings, I tend to find a reason to give the higher score, but not in this case. One two albums, I need more than 1 song that wasn't even a good ripoff to bump it to a 2*

Folky folky

We need to stop acting like The Bee Gees were deep and the disco stuff was a weird stage. The disco hits were their best stuff

The Bee Gees benefitted massively from disco. Whilst clear talent in their vocals and songwriting, much duller than their bigger classics.

They have so many bangers but none to be seen on this album!

The beegees are trying to accomplish something that’s cool and interesting and gritty but it feels so manufactured that it comes across corny

I was promised this is from their pre disco era. I like this first track :) The guitar is pretty in it. and the strings. Cello. Melody Fair is pretty too. Oh wow, Seven Seas Symphony is beautiful! There were some really pretty songs at the end of this album. I was only going to give it 3 stars but these last few symphonic type songs bumped it up to 4. I listened to The British Opera like 3 times!

The list of great 1960s double albums is not long, but it doesn't, sadly, include this. The brothers Gibb were terrific songwriters, and you can hear that on here, just not consistently. It is the sound of a band going through the same 1968 epiphany as everyone else from the Moody Blues to The Band, throwing everything at the wall to see if any of it sticks. There are memorable moments dotted through this, but there's also an awful lot of filler - songs which are just vague melodies in three-part harmony over and acoustic guitar, or padded out pointlessly with strings to make them sound Important. I was previously unaware of it; I'm glad I've heard it; I'll likely never listen to it again.

You know it wasn't too shabby. Felt more like the Monkees than disco. But there just wasn't enough there to really make me want to come back to it. I was missing the falsetto, the swagger, the Bee Gees of it all.

Definitely gets too operatic at times but I kinda like the bones to this one if that makes sense. 6/10

Long et dépressif

ok

I love the Bee Gees. This is a super chill record.

diverse, soft and sweet, would want to listen again to really appreciate it

When I thought of The Bee Gees, I thought about the Saturday Night Fever SDTK (probably more well known than the movie). But this album shows that there was a lot more to The Bee Gees before disco. Some of the stuff sounds like it was influenced by the Beatles, as well as by classical/operatic pieces

Pop, baroque pop, chamber pop, progressive pop, country.

The Bee Gees are not given enough credit for how good they were as musicians and singers. They got exceptionally popular in their disco era, rightfully so, but their previous albums are just as worthy of recognition. Odessa is an odd pull, due to how out there it is compared to the rest of their catalog. Anyone expecting the standard Bee Gees sound is going to wind up disappointed, and I'm of the personal belief that concept albums are always 50/50 on whether they convert a new listener, or get said listener to give up on a band entirely. I enjoy Odessa, but I will also note that I am weird and like weird things. I think the album is great for showcasing the range and experimentation of the Bee Gees.

Aqui hay un muy buen disco de como 8 canciones pero lo que tenemos es quizá demasiaaaado largo.

Mesmerizing, weird, a little bland, a little country, this one is all over the place in ways that are often better than worse. It shouldn't be a double album for sure, and there's plenty of pruning to be done. But all told this is a unique run in pop that probably can't be recreated again. Maybe not essential listening but it'd be way more fun if The Bee Gees stuck to this road instead of going completely commercial.

So you're telling me these are the same guys who did saturday night fever

I thought I liked the Bee Gees

Different time

Well, that was not what I was expecting at all.

Momentous day for me personally as this album is number 1000 from the list. Getting giddy for tomorrow as it should be the final selection from the list but somehow it isn’t. Will have another 88 to look forward to. This was a definite left field album to celebrate 1000 with. Never heard of this album before and something a long way from the BG’s comfort zone and miles away from their disco phase. It’s interesting that the two BG’s albums on this list predate the disco albums for which they achieved most of their fame and popularity. That said I’m at one with the 1001 Gods as their early stuff trumps anything from the Saturday Night Fever era. I can see where they were going with this album but it quickly becomes bogged down with over elaborate production and a storyline which doesn’t really merit a whole album. Maybe they looked at Tommy and thought it was a good idea. So only a mediocre album for 1000. Let’s hope for better things tomorrow when I reach the false finishing line. 2/5 28/9/26

was definitely interesting, not like anything i'd heard from the Bee Gees before

Lot goin on

“I started to cry, which started the whole world laughing” The album is bland and boring. I can't believe anyone would ever want to listen to music after this experience. When it comes to concept and structure, just making a track long doesn't mean you've created Tommy. Recording a song with an orchestra doesn't mean you've made Sgt. Pepper. Picking a fight with your bandmates while recording your "masterpiece" doesn't mean you've just made Pet Sounds. I'd rather listen to a fork scraping a plate for an hour than suffer through this dull, overhyped pop record.

The band led by the Gibb brothers—originally a pure pop act—ventured into making a concept album, though it didn't quite turn out to be one in the strict sense. Everything revolves around the opening track, "Odessa (City on the Black Sea)," which runs for over seven minutes. The result is a highly symphonic record. As a young person living in the GDR, I bought the band's AMIGA release, though it contained only one song from this particular album. Despite its catchy pop sensibilities, I found the music truly beautiful; it was a soundtrack to a period of my life. Listening to this magnificent album now, for the first time in its entirety, fills me with admiration. "Marley Purt Drive" is an earthy, spirited country-rock and bluegrass track—the kind that would have suited CCR perfectly. I find this absolutely astonishing; it illustrates just how open the musical landscape was back then, with bands constantly learning from—or simply copying—one another. The very next track, "Edison," reveals clear influences of the psychedelic and baroque pop styles of the late 1960s. The intimate "Suddenly"—sung almost entirely by Maurice Gibb—sounds like a lost track by a band such as Fairport Convention. "Sound of Love" stands out as a superb piano-and-orchestra piece—arguably the best of its kind not performed by Elton John. Viewed 57 years later, this album is truly a worthy entry in the list of the "1001 Best Albums." I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it.

Not bad, kinda forgettable

This was very different to what I expected. Much folkier and proggier. I quite liked it although bits sound a bit dated.

I really liked, "Seven Seas Symphony". On the whole, I found the album to be a rather eclectic compilation of songs; some better than others.

sla, parece muito beatles, não sei se curti tanto não. mas é legal que em odessa, a primeira música, existe um prelúdio pra próxima música, you'll never see my face again, que ganha uns pontos eventualmente vai ficando legalzinho, mas n consigo deixar de pensar que parece beatles