Barry Gibb — “Shine Shine”

Entered Top 40:  September 29, 1984
3  weeks 
Peaked at: 37

While Robin Gibb was working with brother Maurice on the Secret Agent album we’ve already heard from, Barry Gibb was off recording his own solo debut. Barry’s Now Voyager LP is out of print and unavailable on streaming services. While the record didn’t do as well as planned, it’s surprising to me that it’s memory-holed, given that the most audacious Bee Gee misfire is readily available.

The Barry Gibb camp doesn’t have much to say about this period, but the long-form Now Voyager video album that Gibb did for it is available on YouTube. Gibb and Polygram had commissioned Hipgnosis—Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey Powell, and Peter Christopherson, the legendary design group responsible for tons of iconic album covers— to shoot this, as they were just breaking into music-video production as Greenback Films. Thorgerson directed, with the trio collaborating on a screenplay/framing device in which Gibb would have a near-death experience after driving his car into a canal. Gibb and Thorgerson didn’t get along; Thorgerson later called the experience “cosmic punishment.” The film itself is occasionally visually interesting, as one might expect; but the music is nothing special. Well, there’s one song where Barry raps a little. That’s right.

As for “Shine Shine,” I think it’s tolerable until the cheezeball synth part meant to sound like calypso horns. And then I tap out.

That would be Barry Gibb’s last solo Top 40 appearance, though the Bee Gees would stage a brief comeback in the late ’80s; in in 1989 their “One” single reached #7. Gibb would later get a popular late-night talk show, in which he’d talk about issues, chest hair, and crazy cool medallions. Hipgnosis and Greenback Films dissolved a few years after Now Voyager, though Storm Thorgerson continued to direct videos well into the ’90s.