Barry and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees wrote this song. After their wildly successful contributions to the 1978 movie Saturday Night Fever, they were asked by a reporter which artist they'd most like to produce. The answer was Barbra Streisand. Word quickly got back to Streisand's camp, and the group was invited to work on an album for Streisand, which became Guilty. It was her best-selling album.
Two other songs from the album hit US Top 10, and both were duets with Barry Gibb: "Guilty" and "What Kind of Fool." "Guilty" won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal by Duo or Group.
In the UK this was Streisand's first #1. Having made her British chart debut in 1966 with "
Second Hand Rose," the 14-year-279-day interval between her first chart appearance and her first #1 was then the fourth-longest wait in UK chart history.
In the ethereal ballad, Streisand gives voice to a woman who is consumed by intense feelings for the man she loves. She told Rolling Stone that the tune is one of the greatest love songs of all time. "It's a passionate, emotional, and real expression of what it feels like to be in love."
According to Barry Gibb, it took some convincing to get Streisand to record the song because she wasn't entirely comfortable with the lyrics. "She questioned the line 'it's a right I defend, over and over again," he told Billboard. "At first she felt that it was a little bit liberationist - a little too strong for a pop song."
Barry nearly turned down the project because he was scared of working with Streisand. Not only was she a huge star, but her need to be in control of her art earned her a reputation for being difficult.
"We all had heard stories about how tough she is, and she is this enormous star," he admitted in a 1983 Billboard interview. "That's got to intimidate anyone. I didn't want to do it at first, but my wife told me to do it or she'd divorce me! I even called Neil Diamond to ask what it was like to work with her. He had nothing but glowing reports, so I felt a little less scared."
Once they got down to business, the last of Gibb's fears went out the window. "Working with her turned out to be wonderful," he continued. "She wanted my ideas and she gave me a lot of leeway - but she also wanted me to listen to her ideas, which I was glad to do. She was perfectly nice - a true lady in every sense of the word."
This is the fifth and final #1 hit on the Hot 100 of Streisand's career (the first was "
The Way We Were" in 1973). After unseating Queen's "
Another One Bites The Dust," it held the top spot for three weeks until it was replaced by Kenny Rogers' "
Lady."
This brought Streisand back to the top of the Adult Contemporary chart after a two-year absence. Her last hit to top the tally was "
Songbird" from her 1978 album of the same name.
This earned Barry and Robin Gibb the Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically in 1981.
This was nominated for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 1981 Grammy Awards, where the respective prizes went to Christopher Cross' "
Sailing" and Bette Midler's "
The Rose."
According to Albhy Galuten, a member of the Bee Gees' production team who also co-produced
Guilty with Barry Gibb and Karl Richardson, the song borrows an element from a
Saturday Night Fever hit.
"'Woman in Love' was the same drum loop we used for '
Stayin' Alive,' just slowed way down and EQ'd radically," he revealed in
a 2020 interview with Albumism. They credited the part to Bernard Lupe, the same fictional artist who got credit on "Stayin' Alive."
Barry Gibb's 1979 demo recording of the ballad can be found on the 2006 compilation The Guilty Demos.
English singer Liz McClarnon of Atomic Kitten released this as her debut solo single in 2006. Her version was produced by Robin Gibb and peaked at #5 in the UK.
That's Pete Carr of the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section on guitar. He also plays the big guitar solo on the album's closing track, "
Make It Like A Memory."
