"Woman in Love" is a song performed by Barbra Streisand and taken from her 1980 album, Guilty. The song was written by Barry and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees, who received the 1980 Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. It is her fourth of four Platinum records, and is considered her greatest international hit. After the success enjoyed by the Bee Gees in the late 1970s, the band was asked to participate in musical endeavors for other artists, and Streisand asked Barry Gibb to write an album for her. This album ultimately became Guilty. "Woman in Love", as the lead single, became one of the most successful songs of Streisand's music career. It reached the number-one position on the BillboardHot 100 chart, Streisand's fifth number one hit on that chart. It replaced Queen's big-selling hit "Another One Bites the Dust", spent three weeks at number one, and was itself replaced by "Lady" by country singer Kenny Rogers. It also spent five weeks atop the adult contemporary chart, her sixth number one on that tally. The song also proved very popular internationally, reaching number one in many countries, including in the UK Singles Chart. The song sold more than 2.5 million till December 1981, according to Billboard.
Music video
The music video for the song included clips from A Star Is Born, starring Streisand and Kris Kristofferson and other movies she made in the 1970s.
member Liz McClarnon covered "Woman in Love" after the band's split in 2005. Produced by original songwriter Robin Gibb—whom McClarnon accompanied on his 2005 tour—the cover was released in February 2006 as McClarnon's debut solo single. In the United Kingdom, the song was released as a double A-side with a cover of Jackie Wilson's 1968 hit "I Get the Sweetest Feeling". The double A-side peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart on February 19, 2006, staying in the top 100 for six weeks. Elsewhere, "Woman in Love" reached number 21 in Ireland and became a minor hit in Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands. McClarnon would go on to record another song entitled "Lately", but the track was not released as a single.
"Woman in Love" is the first demo Barry Gibb recorded for Barbra Streisand's album Guilty. This composition by the Gibb brothers Barry and Robin would become the album's very successful first single. And it was due to this demo that Barry Gibb became the first male artist to sing the song, though it was originally recorded for Streisand alone in order for her to sing the song for her album.
The French singer Mireille Mathieu did her own cover, but titled Une Femme Amoureuse. The argentinan singer Jairo did an italian cover titled Forte, piu forte di me The Bulgarian singer Lili Ivanova recorded an original English version especially for a show program that aired on Channel One of Central Television in USSR in 1980. A Russian version of this song was also recorded by Soviet band "Здравствуй, песня!" in 1982 by the name "Просто я такая женщина". Danish siger Gitte Hænning recorded the german version Die Frau, die dich liebt in 1980 and it reached the German Hitlist for 13 weeks and peaked at number 12. British vocalist Rebekah Ryan released a version of the track as a single in 1997, on MCA records. British indie rock bandThe Bluetones released their cover as a B-side to the 2002 single After Hours. "Woman in Love" was covered by CoCo Lee in 1995, Dana Internationalin 1999, S.H.E in 2002 and Young Divas in 2006. In 2011, the Moroccan singer Sofia Marikh recorded an Arabic version of the song تهواك Tahwak.
