Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0098 (May 30, 2025)

Buds:

Not much to report: scaling down, packing, setting the move date. Just celebrated my kid becoming a teen and the 3rd anniversary with my bb. Saw some good friends for the last time in a while last night, and feeling a certain kinda way. Also found out what happens when you split a monstera plant in half (you get two plants, and they are thriving).

Going down to check out The Tubs (who I missed last night) at Do Division in a bit, so this one’s coming through a bit earlier than usual. Ad hoc music love at its finest!

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SAMANTHA SANG “Emotion” b/w “When Love Is Gone” 45 (Private Stock, 1977)

(spoiler if you watch this and haven’t seen the movie, kinda don’t care tho)

Two sides of Sang: her clotted, breathy theme song to French softcore steamer Bilitis, and of course “Emotion.” God, this song. Been playing in my brainpan since youth, a real dentist office melter, capitalizing on the Olivia Newton-John of it all but with the secret weapon of the Brothers Gibb, kicking off their collaboration cycle at a time when they couldn’t have been more popular, never more saturated into Western culture. You’d be forgiven for thinking this is a Bee Gees song, since they take over so much of the chorus, but that’s sort of the point: their shingle was up, a way to keep the music flowing without having to represent it in person. It is the move. When you have that much clout, spread it out, let there be no doubt. At the beginning of this year it crept back into my realm at the end of Companion, a better than OK little sci-fi/black comedy bauble that sparked the Sophie Thatcher era maybe for good, and has a couple needledrops that stay with you (first “Boy” by Book of Love, then this one). Sitting back in that theater recliner, with that little post-credits stinger and this number floating underneath, I remembered why this song works so well. Slow without being syrupy, completely swimming in the falsetto chest hair of these lovely lads, it accomplishes something in the chorus that only the Bee Gees could do – make you feel like the only person on Earth at any given time, all due to that “and there’ll be nobody left in this world to hold me tight/kiss goodnight” couplet. Songs don’t isolate like this just for fun; Sang and the Gibbs make it special, and for a brief moment create a remove from wherever else you could be and place you inside theirs. Found this in a stack of unsleeved 45s at an estate sale in a gated community, alongside almost every Beach Boys record and that Elton John 11-17-70 record, so there was a little taste involved at some point. I’ve played it like 10 times this week; thankfully the good side isn’t all crackly.

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