Their Album Flopped So Badly It's Still Their Worst Chart Showing — And the Title Track Became One of Their Biggest Songs Anyway
Their Album Flopped So Badly It's Still Their Worst Chart Showing — And the Title Track Became One of Their Biggest Songs Anyway
The Eagles built an entire concept album around outlaws, it topped out at No. 41 and produced zero hit singles, and the song everyone remembers from it was never even released as a single — until a woman they used to back up on tour saved it.
In 1973, the Eagles released an album that should have buried "Desperado" for good.
The record it came from peaked at number 41 on the Billboard chart. To this day, it remains the lowest-charting studio album of the band's career.
Neither of its two actual singles cracked the Top 50.
And "Desperado" itself — now one of the most recognizable songs in the Eagles' catalog — was never released as a single at all.
A melody Don Henley had been carrying around for years
The chords and melody behind "Desperado" didn't start in 1973. Don Henley had worked them out years earlier, sometime in the late 1960s.
The style leaned on Stephen Foster, the 19th-century songwriter behind "Oh! Susanna" and "My Old Kentucky Home" — songs Henley had learned as a boy from his grandmother.
After moving to Laurel Canyon, Henley sat down at a piano with his new writing partner, Glenn Frey, and played him the unfinished intro.
Frey immediately built on it, adding richer lyrics and chord changes. "Don sat down at the piano and showed me this song he was working on, and it was the intro to 'Desperado,'" Frey said later.
The Eagles, the Los Angeles band behind "Desperado."
An outlaw concept born from a birthday gift
The song didn't just appear on its own. It grew out of a bigger idea the band was chasing that year.
Songwriter Jackson Browne had been given a book about Old West outlaws — the Doolin-Dalton gang — as a 21st birthday present from a friend. Reading it, Browne, Frey, Henley, and J.D. Souther started kicking around the idea of an album about "anti-heroes," outsiders who lived by their own rules.
"Desperado," why don't you come to your senses" became the new opening line the band grafted onto Henley's old Stephen Foster-style intro.
The concept gave the record its shape: outlaws, gunslingers, and men who couldn't settle down — a theme the band, all transplants from other states chasing something out West, felt personally.
An album that flopped almost immediately
Desperado came out April 17, 1973. It debuted at a lowly No. 145 on the Billboard 200 and eventually crawled up to No. 41 — eight weeks after release.
Both of its official singles, "Tequila Sunrise" and "Outlaw Man," missed the Top 50 entirely.
The title track wasn't released as a single at all. It got scattered FM airplay on stations that occasionally played non-single album cuts, and not much else.
▶ Listen: Eagles — "Desperado" (Official Audio)
The woman who saved it
Five and a half months after Desperado came out, singer Linda Ronstadt released her own album, Don't Cry Now — and put her version of "Desperado" on it.
The connection wasn't random. Ronstadt was the reason several future Eagles had met in the first place: Henley, Frey, Randy Meisner, and Bernie Leadon had all played in her touring band before forming their own group.
Linda Ronstadt, pictured in 1974 — the singer whose cover of "Desperado" is widely credited with turning it into a standard.
Her version reached a much wider audience than the Eagles' original ever had.
Don Henley didn't dispute it. "I was extremely flattered that Linda recorded 'Desperado,'" he said. "It was really her that popularized the song. Her version was very poignant and beautiful." In a 2016 interview, he put it even more plainly: "That song didn't get much attention until Linda Ronstadt recorded it."
A slow climb to classic status
Despite the commercial stumble, Desperado eventually went double platinum in the United States, and the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.
"Desperado" the song was later ranked No. 494 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
It took Glenn Frey's death in January 2016 for the Eagles' own studio version to chart on Billboard for the first time — 43 years after it was recorded — reaching No. 20 on the Rock Digital Songs chart.
Today it's a fixture of Eagles setlists and Henley's solo shows, closing out performances the way it never closed out a chart.
How a Heartbreak Ballad Became Part of the Bee Gees’ Journey to Reconciliation
"How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" gave Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb their first American No. 1. It also marked the moment three estranged brothers rediscovered their partnership.
Few songs capture heartbreak as gracefully as "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" Released in 1971, the Bee Gees ballad became one of the group's most beloved recordings and their first chart-topper in the United States. Behind its tender melody lies a story that reaches beyond romantic loss: it was written as Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb were finding their way back to each other after a painful split.
A Family Group Comes Apart
By the late 1960s the Bee Gees were international stars. Their soaring harmonies and carefully crafted songs had produced hits such as "Massachusetts," "To Love Somebody" and "I've Gotta Get a Message to You." Success, however, did not protect them from conflict.
In 1969 the tension came to a head over their album Odessa. Barry's "First of May" was chosen as the lead single, while Robin had hoped his own composition, "Lamplight," would get that spotlight. The dispute contributed to Robin's decision to leave the group and go solo. He soon scored a UK hit with "Saved by the Bell," while Barry and Maurice carried on as a duo and appeared in the television special Cucumber Castle.
For a time, the future of the Bee Gees as a trio looked uncertain. The rift was painful precisely because it was not only professional. These were brothers who had grown up performing together and built their lives around making music as a family.
The Road Back
The turning point came in 1970. After months apart, the brothers began talking again, and the idea of working together grew more appealing than their solo ambitions. According to Barry's recollection, Robin visited him in London on a cold, wet day, and the two began writing the song that would become "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" They finished it with Maurice and returned to the studio together.
The timing matters. The brothers had already reunited by 1970, a year before the song was released, so it would be inaccurate to say the hit alone brought them back together. Instead, writing it became part of the healing process, giving them something to create together once more.
Their renewed partnership quickly paid off. The album 2 Years On (1970) produced "Lonely Days," which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The Meaning of the Song
At its core, the song is about the ache of loss and the difficult search for hope after something precious has been damaged. Its central question, how a broken heart can ever be made whole, is never answered neatly, which lets listeners sit with the uncertainty.
The lyrics are not a direct account of the Gibbs' dispute, but the circumstances of its writing add another layer. Reconciliation between people who have hurt one another is rarely simple, and it often begins with a willingness to sit down, talk and make something together again.
Musically, the recording is restrained and expressive. Rather than the driving rhythms that would later make the group synonymous with disco, it rests on melody, arrangement and Barry's tender lead vocal, supported by the brothers' harmonies. Long before Saturday Night Fever, it showed the Bee Gees' gift for turning complicated emotions into memorable pop.
Their First American No. 1
Released in 1971 as the lead single from the album Trafalgar, "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for four weeks. It was the Bee Gees' first American chart-topper, and a powerful sign that their creative partnership had survived the separation.
The success laid the foundation for the next chapter of their career. Through the 1970s the group evolved into the falsetto-driven, dance-floor phenomenon that conquered the world. But before the shimmering rhythms, there was this quieter milestone: a heartfelt ballad that helped the brothers reconnect with their musical identity.
More Than a Single Moment
It is tempting to treat the song as the moment that saved the Bee Gees. The truth is more nuanced. The brothers had already begun repairing their relationship through conversation, renewed trust and a shared decision to work together. The song became a meaningful part of that process, not a magic cure.
That is why the story still resonates more than half a century later. Heartbreak comes in many forms: the end of a romance, the loss of someone important, a painful quarrel with someone we love. Healing rarely happens overnight, and reconciliation takes patience, honesty and a willingness to begin again.
"How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" is a beautiful ballad, but it is also part of a real story about separation, reconciliation and the enduring bond between three brothers.
