🌫️ A Sky Full of Noise
In 1968, Robin Gibb sat in a plane somewhere between London and New York, lost in his thoughts. The Bee Gees had just come off their breakthrough with “Massachusetts” and “Words,” and they were no longer the young Australian hopefuls—they were global stars. But fame, as always, came with isolation.
As the plane climbed higher, Robin closed his eyes and listened—not to music, but to the drone of the engines. The sound was strange, almost mournful. It wavered, trembled, and to his sensitive ear, it felt like a voice.
“It was the sound of humanity,” Robin would later recall. “I heard it as if the plane was crying.”
In that haunting hum, he heard a metaphor for himself—a man who could make the world dance and sing, yet felt profoundly misunderstood. It was as though the universe was whispering a secret truth: that sorrow and laughter often live side by side, and sometimes, one gives birth to the other.
By the time the plane touched down, a new melody was already forming in his mind.
🕯️ The Joke That Wasn’t Funny
“I Started a Joke” was written not as a love song, but as a confession. It told the story of a man who laughs—and the world laughs with him—until he cries, and suddenly, no one understands.
It was, in many ways, Robin’s own story. He had always been the melancholic heart of the Bee Gees trio—Barry the leader, Maurice the glue, and Robin the dreamer. His voice trembled with vulnerability, his lyrics drawn from the dark corners of the soul.
When he brought the song to his brothers, they didn’t fully grasp its meaning. Barry later admitted,
“I never quite knew what it was about, but it moved me. It sounded like pain turned into beauty.”
Robin didn’t explain much. He simply sang it—once. One take. His voice cracked, hovered, and landed in a place so fragile that no one dared ask him to do it again.
That first and only take became the master recording.
💿 The Birth of a Global Hymn
Released in late 1968 on Idea, the Bee Gees’ fifth album, “I Started a Joke” quickly resonated around the world. It topped the charts in Canada and New Zealand, became a major hit across Europe and Latin America, and quietly climbed the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S.
But what mattered wasn’t its position—it was its emotion. People didn’t just listen; they wept.
Radio DJs in the late ’60s reported receiving letters from listeners who said the song “saved” them from loneliness. Priests quoted it in sermons. Soldiers wrote its lyrics on letters home.
Robin himself was stunned by how deeply people connected. “It wasn’t about religion or politics,” he said. “It was about feeling misunderstood, which everyone has felt.”
In a time when psychedelic rock was obsessed with distortion and rebellion, the Bee Gees had written something achingly human. A simple melody. A trembling voice. A line that refused to be forgotten:
“’Til I finally died, which started the whole world living.”
🎭 The Layers of Meaning
Critics have debated the meaning of “I Started a Joke” for decades. Was it about guilt? Death? Rebirth?
Robin offered no single answer, saying only:
“It’s about the irony of life — how we don’t see truth until it’s too late.”
Some interpreted it as a Christ-like allegory: one man’s suffering awakening the conscience of the world. Others saw it as a reflection on fame — how the Bee Gees’ own success had turned them into caricatures, loved yet misunderstood.
Robin himself hinted at both readings. “It’s about being laughed at for being sincere,” he once said softly. “It’s about how your sadness becomes someone else’s entertainment.”
In that sense, the song wasn’t just prophetic — it was personal.
🕊️ One Take of Eternity
When Robin stepped into the studio to record “I Started a Joke,” it was just him, a microphone, and his brothers watching from the booth. Barry strummed softly on acoustic guitar. Maurice added a slow organ chord.
Robin closed his eyes.
No one spoke after he finished. The room was silent — not because the take was perfect, but because it was human.
The Bee Gees would later try to overdub harmonies, but Robin’s voice already carried enough harmony within it — the kind born from pain and compassion.
That rawness became the song’s soul.
🌍 The Song That Wouldn’t Die
Over the decades, “I Started a Joke” became one of the Bee Gees’ most covered songs. From Faith No More’s haunting 1998 version to Wallflowers’ tribute for Maurice Gibb in 2003, each rendition added new meaning.
At Maurice’s funeral, the song played softly as photos of the brothers appeared onscreen — a circle closing on itself. Robin, visibly broken, mouthed the words he had written nearly four decades earlier.
Years later, before his own passing in 2012, Robin would often close his solo concerts with this song. His voice, now older and frailer, somehow made it even more powerful.
In one of his final interviews, he said,
“I never knew what made me write it. Maybe I was listening to the sound of God through the engines.”
💫 Legacy: The Plane That Still Cries
Half a century later, the world still hums along to “I Started a Joke.” It appears in films, TV shows, and memorials. Younger generations discover it on streaming platforms and ask the same question: “Why does this song make me feel like I’m about to cry?”
The answer lies not just in the lyrics, but in its birth — in that moment of strange grace aboard a noisy airplane.
Robin Gibb found music where most people hear chaos. He heard humanity in a machine, and turned it into art.
What began as the cry of a plane became the cry of the world — and a song that will never stop echoing.
🎵 Song
Written by Robin, Barry & Maurice Gibb. Produced by Robert Stigwood & Bee Gees.