Explain the lyrics of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees like it’s a Shakespearean sonnet and this is sophomore English class.

Okay class, today we’ll be covering another poem from the late 20th century: “Stayin’ Alive” by the Gibb brothers, who called themselves “The Bee Gees”. So, like many poems from the era, this has the Verse-Chorus structure. Can anyone identify the chorus? Anyone?

Remember, the chorus of a poem is the most repeated section. So in this case, the chorus is? Yes, Billy, it’s the stanza with “Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive”, exactly. And so which parts are the verse? The parts that lie between each chorus, correct.

Now, like with every poem, we next need to identify the meter. Remember, back in the 1900s, these poems were set to music, so to find the meter, we have to know: where is the beat?

Let’s look at the first verse:

Well you can tell by the way I use my walk/
I’m a woman’s man, no time to talk/
Music loud and women warm/
I’ve been kicked around since I was born.

Look at the end of each line: “walk”, “talk”, “warm”, “born”… They’re all open vowels, indicating that that part of the line, the end, is stressed. So, we’re dealing with a backbeat meter, or a disco meter.

Ok, so, can anyone hazard a guess as to what this poem is about? Yes, Melissa, “not dying” is a good guess, but is there a deeper meaning?

Let’s remember, the chorus emphasizes and summarizes the theme, but the verses are where the theme is explained and expanded upon. Look at the end of verse 1 again:

I’ve been kicked around since I was born

And also this line in the chorus:

Feel the city breaking and everybody shaking

Any guesses now? No? Ok, I’ll tell you, it’s about survival, it’s about living even though the world is against you. And we can see from the use of the word “everybody” that this was a universal problem in the 1900s. Another line worth noting is

We can try to understand/
The New York Times’ effect on men

This might need a bit of explanation: The New York Times was a newspaper, which like an ancient version of Twitter, written on thin slices of wood. And so we can see that The New York Times represents society. So here Barry Gibb poses a question to the audience, what is the effect of society on people?

Does anyone have an answer? No “it helps them” is not right, remember we’re talking about the 1900s here. Yes, Tucker, “society hurts them” is good, can you expand on that? In what ways?

Ok, I’ll help, let’s look at the line right after the chorus:

Life’s goin’ nowhere, somebody help me

So the author is saying that his life is stagnating, he’s demoralized and stuck. And tying this back together with those earlier lines, we can see that society is doing this to him. Society is putting him in a box, isolating him, and he’s trapped.

But this poem isn’t just about the ills of society, it’s also hopeful! We’ve already seen that in the chorus: despite everything, “we’re Stayin’ Alive”! And what is it that is motivating the author to keep on living? Any guesses? Let’s look at a couple more lines:

Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother/
You’re stayin’ alive

This indicates a sense of community, that the author is not surviving alone, but with others. Contrast community here with the isolation in “Life’s goin’ nowhere”: community is exactly why they are surviving. And who is this community? There’s a couple lines that can help us with that:

Got the wings of heaven on my shoes/
I’m a dancing man, and I just can’t lose

Remember, this poem was originally set to music, and since we know it has a disco beat, it was dance music, music made for a community experience together. The community is all the people dancing and listening to the music, it’s us the audience! So now we have a good sense of the meaning and purpose of this poem: to acknowledge the struggles people face and to remind them they’re not alone, and that together, they will stay alive.

• Arts and Letters