Shadow Dancing

Andy Gibb was the younger brother of Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb - the Bee Gees - but due to the age difference between Andy and his older brothers, and the fact that Andy didn't embrace disco to quite the degree that they did, Andy seldom performed with the Bee Gees, although they did help him write many of his songs, including this one. Together, the brothers Gibb dominated the US pop chart in 1978, with Andy and the Bee Gees each scoring three #1 hits - and the Bee Gees contributing to a few others - but "Shadow Dancing" turned out to be the biggest of them all, staying at #1 for seven weeks and becoming Billboard magazine's #1 single of the entire year of 1978. (Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" was actually an even bigger hit, but because its chart run straddled 1977 and 1978, it only managed to finish #3 for 1978, behind the Bee Gees' "Night Fever"). Andy's other #1 hits in 1978 (both of which came before "Shadow Dancing") were "I Just Want To Be Your Everything" and "Love Is Thicker Than Water." He would also have a Top 5 hit that year with "An Everlasting Love." He was barely 20 years old at this, the height of his career.

Unfortunately for Andy, his star fell almost as quickly as it rose. Although he had a few more hits over the next three years, by 1982 his career had stalled, due in large part to his addiction to cocaine and a sort of negative-coattails effect with the Bee Gees, whose own stature had fallen with the passing of the disco era. He eventually got treatment for his drug addiction at the Betty Ford Clinic, but by then the damage to his career, his finances and his health were already done. In 1988 Andy Gibb died from myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle caused by a viral infection, and aggravated by his years of substance abuse.

This was written by all four Gibb brothers. Andy joined his older siblings Barry, Robin and Maurice for a writing session in Hollywood, where were filming the movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. "We literally sat down and in ten minutes, we had a group going, (singing) the chorus part," Andy recalled in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits.