After the success of the Bee Gees in the late 1970s, there was some time to write songs for other artists and Streisand, one of those artists, asked Gibb to write an album for her.[5] It became her best-selling album to date internationally, with sales between 15–20 million copies worldwide as well as spawning several hit singles.[6][7]
The lead single "Woman in Love" became one of the most successful songs of Streisand's music career and spent a total of three weeks at number one in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Two other singles were released, which also peaked within the top ten on Billboard Hot 100: the title track, a duet between Streisand and Gibb, won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1981, released as a second single for the album, and became an instant hit, peaking at number three, and "What Kind of Fool", another duet with Gibb, reached number ten for three weeks. The fourth single, "Promises", a more disco-oriented track released in May 1981, reached as high as number forty-eight. This song was also released on Streisand's first commercially released 12" single as a solo artist following her 1979 duet with Donna Summer, "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)", and two promotional singles released for "Shake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over)" in 1975, and "The Main Event/Fight" in 1979.
Streisand released a sequel to this album, Guilty Pleasures, in 2005, also produced and largely written by Gibb. Both albums can also be considered partial-collaboration albums, since Streisand not only did two duets with Gibb, but Gibb could also be heard as a background vocalist in a few other songs solely by the artist herself, along with the fact that both singers were on the cover for both albums issued.
Guitars: Pete Carr, Lee Ritenour, Cornell Dupree, Barry Gibb, Richard Tee (This is a misprint regarding the song "The Love Inside" as Richard Tee obviously plays electric piano on this track. Tee never played guitar in his career)
Guilty was re-released on DualDisc on 30 August 2005 by SonyLegacy Recordings in advance of its sequel project, Guilty Pleasures and also commemorated its 25th anniversary. The re-release featured remastered audio, new interviews with Streisand and Gibb, two live performances from 1986 and a photo gallery of the original photo session for Guilty by Mario Casilli.
References in popular culture
In October 2010, American DJ duo Duck Sauce released a single titled "Barbra Streisand", the cover of which is modeled directly after Guilty. Neither the song nor the artist are associated in any way with Barbra Streisand.
The Guilty Demos
Untitled
The Guilty Demos is a demo version of the album by Barry Gibb. Not intended for release tapes of these had been circulating among fans before bootleg CDs started emerging. In October 2006 Gibb made these available through iTunes.[38] Recorded in 1979 all of the songs were written that same year except "The Love Inside" which was written in 1978 during work on Spirits Having Flown. All songs feature Barry Gibb's falsetto voice, except "What Kind of Fool" where he used his natural voice. The songs "Carried Away" and "Secrets" were not used by Streisand but instead recorded by Elaine Page with only "Secrets" being issued on her 1981 self-titled album. Olivia Newton-John recorded and released "Carried Away" on her Physical album, also in 1981. The demo version of "Never Give Up" remains unreleased.[39]