♫ Too Much Heaven ♫

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, music, music history

I’ve only played this one by the Bee Gees once, back in 2019.  Many like their earlier work better, but I like both their earlier ones and the later ones, including this … and I like the backstory!

Too Much Heaven by the Bee Gees, was the band’s contribution to the “Music for UNICEF” fund. They performed it at the Music for UNICEF Concert on 9 January 1979. The song later found its way to the group’s thirteenth original album, Spirits Having Flown.

In the U.S., it would become the fourth of six consecutive to hit the #1 spot, equaling the record set by Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles for the most consecutive #1 songs.

The single was released in the late autumn of 1978. It had originally been intended for use in the John Travolta movie Moment By Moment, but was pulled before the film’s release reportedly because Barry Gibb thought the movie was awful when he was shown a rough cut.  In the first week of 1979, preceding the Music for UNICEF Concert, the single first topped the charts in both the United States and Canada. In the United Kingdom, the single peaked at number three late in 1978. A slow ballad that was unlike the previous two singles off the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, Barry Gibb noted that the group wanted to “move in an R&B direction, still maintaining our lyric power, and our melody power as well.”

In the summer of 1978, the Gibb brothers announced their latest project at a news conference at the United Nations in New York City. All of the publishing royalties on their next single would go into UNICEF, to celebrate the International Year of the Child, which was designated to be 1979. The song earned over $7 million in publishing royalties. Then-United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralded the move as “an outstanding and generous initiative.”

The Bee Gees were later invited to the White House, where President Jimmy Carter thanked the group for their donation. At the ceremony, the brothers presented Carter with one of their black satin tour jackets. Carter remarked that he was “not a disco fan” but knew enough about their music because his daughter Amy was a big fan.

Too Much Heaven
Bee Gees

Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line
Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as high as a mountain
And harder to climb

Oh you and me girl
Got a lot of love in store
And it flows through you
And it flows through me
And I love you so much more
Then my life, I can see beyond forever
Everything we are will never die
Loving’s such a beautiful thing
Oh you make my world, a summer day
Are you just a dream to fade away

Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line
Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as high as a mountain
And harder to climb

You and me girl got a highway to the sky
We can turn away from the night and day
And the tears you had to cry
You’re my life
I can see a new tomorrow
Everything we are will never die
Loving’s such a beautiful thing
When you are to me, the light above
Made for all to see our precious love

Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line
Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as high as a mountain
And harder to climb

Love is such a beautiful thing
You make my world a summer day
Are you just a dream to fade away

Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line
Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as wide as a river
And harder to climb

Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line

Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as high as a mountain
And harder to climb
Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line

Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as high as a mountain
And harder to climb

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Barry Gibb / Barry Alan Gibb / Maurice Gibb / Maurice Ernest Gibb / Robin Gibb / Robin Hugh Gibb
Too Much Heaven lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Warner Chappell Music Inc

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26 thoughts on “♫ Too Much Heaven ♫”

  1. A nice change from their disco garbage (in my opinion) but i don’t get the lyrics. Maybe tgey made sense in the movie it was supposed to be featured in, but on its own I’m left yanging. Sounds pretty, but how much is too much love?

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  5. They really characterised an era, with their distinctive voices and entertaining melodies. I hadn’t thought of this in a while–thanks!

    I have also seriously noted that the word and concept HEAVEN was very very big late 70s-early 80s, including in New Wave music. It was really a certain defined place-experience for many singers during that time. I never hear it anymore in music–

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    • I am so glad you like it!!! It’s one I hadn’t thought of in a while, too … in fact, hadn’t thought of the Bee Gees for a while.

      I don’t know … I try to avoid religious terms, but I think maybe the fact that religion is losing ground these days is at least one part of the reason.

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      • To me heaven just isn’t religious but became more a popular term about ‘the greatest’ or ‘best place and time’, like ‘paradise’ came to be.

        It did get me to thinking of the use of the term in music around then. There was ‘Images of Heaven’ by a group whose name I forget around 1982, and another with the chorus and possible name ‘Just Like Heaven’, and The Cure’s completely different and poignant ‘Just Like Heaven’, and Talking Heads, in which their idea of heaven was something excellent that recurred perfectly and that it was ‘hard to imagine that nothing at all could be so exciting, could be so much fun–heaven is a place a place where nothing nothing ever happens’–

        It was used so much for a certain time often to refer to fleeting and lost romances and perfections of experience, and then maybe the language or notion faded, but I still love the idea as an abstract (despite me being not an eternalist as per Tibetan Buddhsm definition–their idea is that it’s all thermodynamics so to speak, all recycling, and NOT some idea of people scoring entry into some heaven forever as some reward, but I digress into the slightly-relgious because part of me would LOVE the idea of there being an ‘eternal reward’ for something, while most of me believes that recycling does happen and stasis doesn’t really for long–)

        Sure, a lot of us grew up in religions and traditions that had heavens and hells and hecks and it sort of stuck for a long while–

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  6. They wrote some great songs, but I prefer someone else singing them. The relentless falsetto jars on me. Full marks to them for Saturday Night Fever though. I loved that film, and the soundtrack! 🙂
    Best wishes, Pete.

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  7. Pingback: ♫ Too Much Heaven ♫ | Filosofa’s Word | Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News

  9. Jill, I don’t know if you saw the Kennedy Center Honors last week, but Barry Gibb was the final honoree. The show concluded with a nice tribute to Gibb and his brothers with songs from the various vintages of styles over the years. Keith

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