Stayin' Alive

Stayin' Alive was the second single from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, released by RSO in December 1977 and co-produced with Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson. The brothers wrote it over a few days, on the staircase at the Chateau d'Herouville studio near Paris. RSO wanted the title Saturday Night, and Stigwood renamed the film Saturday Night Fever. Robin said the subject is survival in the streets of New York.

The track was finished at Criteria Studios in Miami. Barry sings falsetto throughout except on the line life's going nowhere, somebody help me. When drummer Dennis Bryon left the sessions early, the group took two bars of drums from Night Fever and looped them on tape, and the drummer was jokingly credited as Bernard Lupe. The album version runs 4:43 and the single edit 3:29.

Chart and afterlife

It reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on 4 February 1978 and stayed four weeks, and it reached No. 4 in the UK. It won the 1979 Grammy Award for Best Vocal Arrangement for Two or More Voices. Pitchfork's Kristen Yoonsoo Kim notes that the film opens with John Travolta walking down the street to the song. Rolling Stone placed it at No. 99 on its 2021 list of the 500 Greatest Songs. Among the 320 logged setlists that list songs, it appears in 127.