How Deep Is Your Love (Bee Gees song)

1977 single by Bee Gees

"How Deep Is Your Love" is a pop ballad written and recorded by the Bee Gees in 1977 and released as a single in September of that year. It was ultimately used as part of the soundtrack to the film Saturday Night Fever. It was a number three hit in the United Kingdom and Australia. In the United States, it topped the Billboard Hot 100 on 25 December 1977 and stayed in the Top 10 for 17 weeks. It spent six weeks atop the US adult contemporary chart. It is listed at No. 27 on Billboard All Time Top 100. Alongside "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever", it is one of the group's three tracks on the list. The song was covered by Take That for their 1996 Greatest Hits album, reaching No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks. "How Deep Is Your Love" ranked number 375 on Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In a British TV special shown in December 2011, it was voted The Nation's Favourite Bee Gees Song by ITV viewers. During the Bee Gees' 2001 Billboard magazine interview, Barry said that this was his favourite Bee Gees song.

In 1983, the Bee Gees were sued by a Chicago songwriter, Ronald Selle, who claimed that the Gibb brothers stole melodic material from one of his songs, "Let It End", and used it in "How Deep Is Your Love". At trial, the jury returned a finding for Selle. The Bee Gees attorney immediately asked for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. The basis for the motion was that Selle had failed to show, as was required by the law, that the Bee Gees had prior access to his song. Even Selle had admitted that he'd sent out his demo tape to only a few recording companies, none of whom did business with the Bee Gees. Selle also admitted that there were some similarities between his song and several Bee Gee compositions that predated his song by several years, as well as similarities with the Beatles song "From Me to You" written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney (under Lennon McCartney). The judge ruled in favour of the Bee Gees. Selle appealed the ruling, but it was upheld by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals which agreed that Selle had not proven his case.

English pop music group Take That released a cover version as a single from their Greatest Hits compilation in February 1996. This was the first single as a quartet, as Robbie Williams left the group the previous year. The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback single "Patience" a decade later. The song stayed at number one in the UK charts for three weeks. The single sold 671,000 copies and has received a Platinum sales status certification in the UK. The song also topped the charts in Denmark, Israel, Ireland, Lithuania, and Spain. In 2018, the band recorded an updated version of the song with Barry Gibb for their greatest hits remix album, Odyssey.

British magazine Music Week rated the song three out of five, adding, "This difficult to sing Bee Gees number lacks some oomph in this version, which is released as a preview for Take That's forthcoming greatest hits album. A hit, of course, but not one of their biggest." Gerald Martinez from New Sunday Times said it sounds very much like the original. "But then most of their fans have probably not heard the Bee Gees' version. In any case it's a stylish ballad that deserves another hearing."

The accompanying music video for the song saw the remaining four Take That members tied to chairs in a basement. An obsessive fan with blonde hair and heavy eye makeup who has presumingly kidnapped the band (actress and model Paula Hamilton) walks into the basement and circles the four members individually pulling their hair. She then puts them all into her van and drives down the motorway. She stops by a reservoir and has the four members placed on the edge, she points at each member before grabbing Gary Barlow's rope and pushes him back, still holding on. Her fingers slip through the rope and he falls backwards into the reservoir, still tied to the chair. She initially looks shocked, but then smirks.