100 Records That Shook The World, #25

Saturday Night Fever (Original Soundtrack LP)

Various Artists

Saturday Night Fever: The Original Movie Sound Track is the soundtrack album from the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta. In the United States, the album was certified 15x Platinum for shipments of over 15 million copies. The album stayed atop the album charts for 24 straight weeks from January to July 1978 and stayed on Billboard's album charts for 120 weeks until March 1980. In the UK, the album spent 18 consecutive weeks at No. 1. The album epitomized the disco phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic and was an international sensation.

Whether you love or hate disco, this album cannot have escaped your notice. Even I wasn't too fond of disco at the time, but my mother bought it and I grew to love some of the tracks on the LP, particularly Trammps "Disco Inferno", Walter Murphy's "A Fifth Of Beethoven" and "Night On Disco Mountain" by David Shire. The Bee Gees had originally written and recorded the five of the songs used in the film, "Stayin' Alive", "Night Fever", "How Deep Is Your Love", "More Than a Woman" (performed in the film in two different versions - one version by Tavares, and another by the Bee Gees) and "If I Can't Have You" (performed in the movie by Yvonne Elliman) as part of a regular album. They had no idea at the time they would be making a soundtrack and said that they basically lost an album in the process. Two previously-released Bee Gees songs,"Jive Talkin'" and "You Should Be Dancing", are also included on the soundtrack. 

The soundtrack also won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year, the only disco album to do so.
In 2003, the album was ranked No. 131 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
The soundtrack hit the No. 1 spot on Billboard Music Chart's Pop Album and Soul Album charts. In 2003 the TV network VH1 named it the 57th greatest album of all time.
Saturday Night Fever: The Original Movie Soundtrack was ranked 80th in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time.
Pitchfork Media listed Saturday Night Fever as the 34th best album of the 1970s.

Here's one of my faves.