12 April 1987

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	3	6	Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)	–	Paul Lekakis
2	2	9	Sometimes	–	Erasure
3	1	13	The Final Countdown	–	Europe
4	6	8	(I Just) Died in Your Arms	–	Cutting Crew
5	5	7	All I Ask of You	–	Cliff Richard & Sarah Brightman
6	4	17	Everybody Have Fun Tonight	–	Wang Chung
7	11	6	Is This Love?	–	Alison Moyet
8	8	6	French Kissing in the U.S.A.	–	Debbie Harry
9	7	10	Hi! Hi! Hi!	–	Sandra
10	10	19	Two of Hearts	–	Stacey Q
11	9	10	Geronimo’s Cadillac	–	Modern Talking
12	18	5	Shake You Down	–	Gregory Abbott
13	12	18	A Matter of Trust	–	Billy Joel
14	15	11	Forever Live and Die	–	Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
15	17	8	You Give Love a Bad Name	–	Bon Jovi
16	19	4	Caravan of Love	–	Lovemasters
17	13	13	I’ll be Over You	–	Toto
18	20	6	Montego Bay	–	Amazulu
19	14	19	Walk Like an Egyptian	–	Bangles
20	16	9	I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)	–	George Michael & Aretha Franklin
21	26	3	Cry Wolf	–	A-Ha
22	22	19	True Blue	–	Madonna
23	29	2	The Great Pretender	–	Freddie Mercury
24	30	2	Hymn to Her	–	Pretenders
25	21	23	Oh L’Amour	–	Erasure
26	New	1	Everything I Own	–	Boy George
27	27	11	I’ve Been Losing You	–	A-Ha
28	23	9	Hip to be Square	–	Huey Lewis & The News
29	New	1	C’est La Vie	–	Robbie Nevil
30	New	1	Thorn in My Side	–	Eurythmics

Erasure’s ‘Sometimes’ must have been really annoyed as it had waited patiently at 2 for 3 weeks, stuck behind Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’. But this week, when ‘The Final Countdown’ finally dropped from the top spot, instead of ‘Sometimes’ taking over, it was Paul Lekakis’ ‘Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back To My Room)’ which leapfrogged ‘Sometimes’, jumping up from 3 to 1. ‘Sometimes’ spent a 4^th week at 2 while ‘The Final Countdown’ dropped to 3 after 5 weeks at 1.

There was a 3-way tie for climber of the week as Gregory Abbott’s ‘Shake You Down’, Freddie Mercury’s ‘The Great Pretender’ and The Pretenders’ ‘Hymn To Her’ all moved up 6 to land at 12, 23 and 24 respectively. ‘Shake You Down’ was the only one of the 3 that managed this climb within the top 20. Two other songs made star rater climbs and they were Alison Moyet’s ‘Is This Love’ and A-ha’s ‘Cry Wolf’ which moved up 4 and 5 to land at 7 and 21 respectively. This was Alison Moyet’s 7^th star rater climb and she was yet to have a biggest faller award. This was a new record for star raters without a biggest climber.

On the falling front it was The Bangles’ ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ and Huey Lewis & The News’ ‘Hip To Be Square’ which took the honours. Both songs dropped 5 to land at 19 and 28 respectively, making ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ the faller within the top 20. The Bangles were sitting on 45 weeks and this was their first biggest faller. They were the 3^rd act within 4 weeks to see their first biggest faller on exactly 45 weeks (we had Huey Lewis & The News manage this 4 weeks back and then Chris de Burgh 2 weeks back). In total 7 acts had been on 45 weeks or higher when seeing their first biggest faller.

There was no movement on or off the top 20 so ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ enjoyed a second week as the oldest in that part of the chart. It was on 18 top 20 weeks. Erasure’s ‘Oh L’Amour’ moved on to 23 weeks in the top 30 and this was its second week as the oldest in the overall chart.

There were 3 songs leaving the charts this week. The first of these was Dead or Alive’s ‘Brand New Lover’ which saw a run of 12 weeks in total (broken into runs of 2 weeks, 8weeks, and 2 weeks with a week’s break between runs). During its run it peaked at 19. This ended Dead or Alive’s SA chart career. They had seen 3 hits make the charts, accumulated a total of 34 weeks and their best peak was 3 which ‘Lover Come Back To Me’ managed.

Also going was Julian Cope’s ‘World Shut Your Mouth’ which managed 11 weeks and peaked at 12. It would be Cope’s only SA chart hit.

Last of the leavers was Lionel Richie’s ‘Ballerina Girl’ which managed 7 weeks and peaked at 24. This was his tied lowest peak, but the other song that peaked at 24 (‘Love Will Conquer All’) had the lower weeks count of 4. Like Julian Cope, Richie was also seeing the end of his SA chart career. He gave us 8 hits, managed 126 weeks and saw 4 number 1’s which spent a total of 17 weeks at 1. If one adds in his hit as a member of the Commodores it would make his hits count 9 and weeks total 143. He also had song writing credits on 2 further hits (Kenny Rogers’ ‘Lady’ and USA For Africa’s ‘We Are The World’) which, if added in, give him 11 hits, 180 weeks, 5 number 1’s and 19 weeks at 1.

The first new entry was the first solo hit for Culture Club’s lead singer, Boy George. With Culture Club he had seen 4 hits make our charts and now he charted on his own ‘Everything I Own’. The song was a cover of a 1972 hit for Bread. Their version got to number 5 in the US. Two years later Jamaican artist, Ken Boothe, took a cover to number 1 in the UK for 3 weeks. Like the Ken Boothe version, Boy George’s one also topped the UK charts, but only managed 2 weeks at 1. It would go to the top of the charts in Ireland, Norway and Zimbabwe and would top the Radio 5 and Capital 604 charts, but not make the Radio 702 ones.

The second new entry was ‘C’est La Vie’ by Robbie Nevil. This was the second song with that title to make our charts, the previous one being Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s number 14 hit in 1977. This was the 34^th song title that had been seen on the charts for at least 2 completely different songs. Nevil had seen some success as a songwriter, having penned tracks for Sheena Easton, Melissa Manchester, Rockwell and The Pointer Sisters. Most of these were album tracks, but his biggest success as a songwriter before his own hits took off was getting to number 70 in the US having penned El DeBarge’s ‘Someone’. However, his first solo hit, C’est La Vie’ would go to number 2 in the US (stuck behind Gregory Abbott’s ‘Shake You Down’ for 1 week and then Billy Vera’s ‘At This Moment’ for a second week). It would top the charts in Canada and Switzerland and just miss out in Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden and Germany where it was stuck at 2. It would make it to number 1 on Radio 5 and 16 on Capital 604 but not make the 702 charts.

The final new entry was the Eurythmics’ ‘Thorn In My Side’. It was their 5^th song to make the charts and they were the 99^th act to see this many hits. After the relative failure in the UK of their previous single, ‘When Tomorrow Comes’ (which only got to 30), ‘Thorn In My Side’, the second single of their album ‘Revenge’, sent them back up into the top 10 in the UK where it peaked at 5. The music video for the song features Clem Burke, the drummer from Blondie. ‘Thorn In My Side’ would go top 20 in Australia (#12), Austria (#14), Finland (#9), Ireland (#2), New Zealand (#7), Spain (#13) and Sweden (#6). In the US it would only peak at 68. It would top the Radio 702 charts and get to 17 on the Capital 604 ones, but not make the Radio 5 charts. ‘Thorn In My Side’ was the 800^th song by a British act to make the charts.

Modern Talking caught up with Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie for weeks in the charts. All 3 acts had accumulated 126 weeks and they sat tied 14^th overall. Billy Joel moved 1 week ahead of The Sweet and The Troggs with 116 weeks to his name. He held on to 19^th place while the other 2 acts dropped into tied 20^th spot.

Modern Talking also celebrated a second run of 40 weeks with at least 1 song in the charts. This run consisted of 19 weeks with ‘Brother Louie’, 9 weeks with ‘Brother Louie’ and ‘Atlantis Is Calling’, 2 weeks with just ‘Atlantis Is Calling’, 4 weeks with ‘Atlantis Is Calling’ and ‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’ and then 6 weeks with just ‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’. They would be the only act to see 2 separate runs of at least 40 weeks consecutive weeks in the charts.

Youtube playlist:

5 April 1987

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	12	The Final Countdown	–	Europe
2	2	8	Sometimes	–	Erasure
3	5	5	Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)	–	Paul Lekakis
4	3	16	Everybody Have Fun Tonight	–	Wang Chung
5	9	6	All I Ask of You	–	Cliff Richard & Sarah Brightman
6	13	7	(I Just) Died in Your Arms	–	Cutting Crew
7	6	9	Hi! Hi! Hi!	–	Sandra
8	8	5	French Kissing in the U.S.A.	–	Debbie Harry
9	4	9	Geronimo’s Cadillac	–	Modern Talking
10	7	18	Two of Hearts	–	Stacey Q
11	17	5	Is This Love?	–	Alison Moyet
12	10	17	A Matter of Trust	–	Billy Joel
13	12	12	I’ll be Over You	–	Toto
14	11	18	Walk Like an Egyptian	–	Bangles
15	15	10	Forever Live and Die	–	Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
16	14	8	I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)	–	George Michael & Aretha Franklin
17	18	7	You Give Love a Bad Name	–	Bon Jovi
18	23	4	Shake You Down	–	Gregory Abbott
19	25	3	Caravan of Love	–	Lovemasters
20	16	5	Montego Bay	–	Amazulu
21	19	22	Oh L’Amour	–	Erasure
22	22	18	True Blue	–	Madonna
23	21	8	Hip to be Square	–	Huey Lewis & The News
24	24	7	Ballerina Girl	–	Lionel Richie
25	20	11	World Shut Your Mouth	–	Julian Cope
26	28	2	Cry Wolf	–	A-Ha
27	27	10	I’ve Been Losing You	–	A-Ha
28	26	12	Brand New Lover	–	Dead or Alive
29	New	1	The Great Pretender	–	Freddie Mercury
30	New	1	Hymn to Her	–	Pretenders

Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ moved into outright second place for weeks at 1 for a song by a Swedish act as it spent a 5^th week at the top of the charts. This put it 1 ahead of Abba’s ‘S.O.S.’ and 1 behind Abba’s ‘Fernando’. So far 89 songs in total had spent at least 5 weeks at 1 which was just under 79% of the songs that topped the charts. Sweden also moved into outright 3^rd place for weeks at 1 by a non-big 3 nation. This was the 26^th week we had a Swedish act at the top of the charts and the Swedes moved 1 ahead of the Canadians. They now sat 1 behind the Dutch acts and 4 behind the Irish who led the way.

The Cutting Crew’s ‘(I Just) Died In Your Arms’ became the 25^th song to pick up 3 biggest climber awards as it managed its 3^rd one this week with a 7 place climb from 13 to 6. It was the climber both within the top 20 and the top 30. Of the 25 songs to manage 3 biggest climber awards, only Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’ had gone on to see a 4^th award.

There were 4 other star raters and these were Cliff Richard and Sarah Brightman’s ‘All I Ask Of You’ (up 4 from 9 to 5), Alison Moyet’s ‘Is This Love?’ (up 6 from 17 to 11), Gregory Abbott’s ‘Shake You Down’ (up 5 from 23 to 18) and The Lovemasters’ ‘Caravan Of Love’ (up 6 from 25 to 19). It was Alison Moyet’s 6^th star rater climb and she was yet to see a biggest climber award. She was the 2^nd act to see this many star raters and no biggest climber. The only other act to manage this so far was Chris de Burgh. ‘Shake You Down’ and ‘Caravan Of Love’ would be the 2 new entries into the top 20 and ‘Caravan Of Love’ ended a 19 week run with no local hits in the top 20, the 3^rd longest run we had seen so far.

Two songs shared the faller of the week award and they were Modern Talking’s ‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’ and Julian Cope’s ‘World Shut Your Mouth’ which both fell 5 places landing at 9 and 25 respectively. ‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’ was the faller within the top 20 while ‘World Shut Your Mouth’, along with Erasure’s ‘Oh L’Amour’, were the 2 songs leaving the top 20.

‘Oh L’Amour’ had been the oldest in the top 20 last week and that honour now fell to The Bangles’ ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ which had been in that part of the chart for 17 weeks.

We also saw a new oldest in the overall chart as Chris de Burgh’s ‘The Lady In Red’, which had been the oldest in the top 30 last week, fell off the charts. It had seen a run of 26 weeks and spent a total of 9 weeks at 1 (made up of an initial run of 8 weeks, then a further week after dropping off the top spot for 1 week). This heralded the end of the SA chart road for de Burgh. He had seen 3 hits make the charts and clocked up a total of 55 weeks. ‘The Lady In Red’ was by far his best performer. The oldest in the charts was now Erasure’s ‘Oh L’Amour’ which was on 22 weeks.

Also going from the charts was Boris Gardiner’s ‘I Want To Wake Up With You’ which managed 22 weeks and a peak of 4. He too was seeing the end of his SA chart career. He managed 2 hits and 29 weeks and, like Chris de Burgh’, his final hit would also give him his best peak. ‘I want To Wake Up With You’ would be the last song by a Jamaican act to make our charts. The Jamaicans had seen 27 hits make the charts and clocked up a total of 321 weeks. They saw 4 number 1’s which spent a total of 19 weeks at the top of the charts. These stats included Boney M which some may regard as a German act. Excluding Boney M the stats would read 18 hits, 191 weeks and 1 number 1 (Bob Marley’s ‘Buffalo Soldier’) which spent 3 weeks at 1.

Freddie Mercury saw his 3^rd solo hit make the charts this week in the form of ‘The Great Pretender’. The song dated back to 1955 when it was a hit for The Platters going to the top of the US charts and getting to 5 in the UK. In 2004 Rolling Stone magazine voted the Platters’ version the 360^th greatest song of all time. Mercury’s Queen bandmate, Roger Taylor, appears in the video for the song which would give Mercury a number 4 hit in the UK. It would reach the top 20 in Belgium (#6), France (#13), The Netherlands (#11), New Zealand (#5), Sweden (#14) and Switzerland (#15). It would get to number 8 on the Capital 604 charts and 19 on the Radio 5 ones, but not make the 702 charts.

While Freddie was claiming to be the great pretender, we welcomed the great Pretenders back to the charts as they gave us the second new entry in the form of ‘Hymn To Her’. This was their 3^rd SA chart hit and followed up ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’ which finished its run on our charts 2 weeks earlier. The song was written by Meg Keene who was an old school friend of the band’s Chrissie Hynde. According to Wikipedia, ‘The Maiden, Mother and Crone that are mentioned in the song are Archetypes of the collective unconscious, specific psychological imaging of the major psychological transitions women undergo over a lifetime’. Bet you didn’t know that. The song would give The Pretenders a number 8 hit in the UK and it would also chart in Belgium (#25), The Netherlands (#38), New Zealand (#46) and Sweden (#15). It would prove very popular on the local radio stations going to 2 on Radio 5 and 702 and topping the Capital 604 charts.

A-ha helped Norway moved on to 62 weeks in the charts and this moved them up into tied 15^th place on the weeks by acts from a nation list where they shared the spot with Spain. They had a bit of work to do to catch up to Guyana who were just above them on the list as the West Indian nation was 12 weeks ahead on 74 weeks. A-ha also had a second week with songs sitting in adjacent positions on the charts as their ‘Cry Wolf’ was at 26 and ‘I’ve Been Losing You’ was at 27. This was the 48^th time we had seen 2 songs by an act sitting next to each other on the charts and A-ha were the 5^th act to see this twice. Of those 5, only The Bee Gees had managed more times and they sat way ahead of everyone else with 10 weeks.

Erasure celebrated reaching 30 weeks in the charts while Lionel Richie moved into tied 14^th place on the overall weeks count list. His 126 weeks put him level with Michael Jackson. Lower down that list we saw Billy Joel enter the top 20 as he ticked over to 115 weeks and joined The Sweet and The Troggs in tied 19^th place.

Youtube playlist:

29 March 1987

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	11	The Final Countdown	–	Europe
2	2	7	Sometimes	–	Erasure
3	3	15	Everybody Have Fun Tonight	–	Wang Chung
4	5	8	Geronimo’s Cadillac	–	Modern Talking
5	9	4	Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)	–	Paul Lekakis
6	4	8	Hi! Hi! Hi!	–	Sandra
7	8	17	Two of Hearts	–	Stacey Q
8	15	4	French Kissing in the U.S.A.	–	Debbie Harry
9	11	5	All I Ask of You	–	Cliff Richard & Sarah Brightman
10	6	16	A Matter of Trust	–	Billy Joel
11	7	17	Walk Like an Egyptian	–	Bangles
12	10	11	I’ll be Over You	–	Toto
13	13	6	(I Just) Died in Your Arms	–	Cutting Crew
14	14	7	I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)	–	George Michael & Aretha Franklin
15	12	9	Forever Live and Die	–	Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
16	16	4	Montego Bay	–	Amazulu
17	22	4	Is This Love?	–	Alison Moyet
18	19	6	You Give Love a Bad Name	–	Bon Jovi
19	17	21	Oh L’Amour	–	Erasure
20	18	10	World Shut Your Mouth	–	Julian Cope
21	23	7	Hip to be Square	–	Huey Lewis & The News
22	20	17	True Blue	–	Madonna
23	25	3	Shake You Down	–	Gregory Abbott
24	29	6	Ballerina Girl	–	Lionel Richie
25	30	2	Caravan of Love	–	Lovemasters
26	RE	11	Brand New Lover	–	Dead or Alive
27	27	9	I’ve Been Losing You	–	A-Ha
28	New	1	Cry Wolf	–	A-Ha
29	26	22	I Want to Wake Up with You	–	Boris Gardiner
30	24	26	The Lady in Red	–	Chris de Burgh

Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ joined Abba’s ‘S.O.S.’ in having the second highest weeks at 1 by a song by a Swedish act as it ticked over to 4 weeks at the top of the charts. Abba had seen 8 number 1’s and Europe were the only other Swedish act so far to top the charts. It was only Abba’s ‘Fernando’, which spent 6 weeks at 1, which had a higher weeks at 1 figure for the Swedish hits. This was the 25^th week in total that a Swedish act had topped the charts and this moved Sweden into tied 3^rd place for weeks at 1 by a non-big 3 nation, equalling the Canadians and sitting 2 behind The Netherlands and 5 behind Ireland who were the top non-big 3 nation.

For a second week running Debbie Harry’s ‘French Kissing In The U.S.A.’ was the climber of the week as it moved up a further 7 places from 15 to 8. Unlike last week where it was only the climber in the top 30, this week it was the climber in both the top 20 and top 30.

There were 4 other star raters and these were Paul Lekakis’ ‘Boom Boom (Let’s Go back To My Room)’ (up 4 from 9 to 5), Alison Moyet’s ‘Is This Love’ (up 5 from 22 to 17), Lionel Richie’s ‘Ballerina Girl’ (up 5 from 29 to 24) and The Lovemasters’ ‘Caravan Of Love’ (up 5 from 30 to 25). ‘Is This Love’ would be the only new entry into the top 20 and it would replace Madonna’s ‘True Blue’ which dropped to 22.

Chris de Burgh became the 6^th act to see their first biggest faller on 45 or more weeks in the charts. He was on 45 weeks and saw ‘The Lady In Red’ drop 6 from 24 to 30 to take the award. The 6 acts who had seen their first faller on 45 weeks or more does not include Cyndi Lauper who had a chart career of 59 weeks without seeing a faller at all. ‘The Lady In Red’ was on 26 weeks and enjoying its 6^th week as the oldest in the charts.

The biggest fallers inside the top 20 were The Bangles’ ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ and Billy Joel’s ‘A Matter Of Trust’ which both dropped 4 to land at 11 and 10 respectively. The oldest in the top 20 for a second week running was Erasure’s ‘Oh L’Amour’ which became the 98^th song to clock up 20 top 20 weeks.

It was not a good week to have a song title starting with the word ‘Don’t’ as the 2 on last week’s chart that did were the 2 songs leaving the top 30 this week. The first of these was The Pretenders’ ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’ which managed 10 weeks and a peak of 21. They still had 1 more hit to come.

The other was The Communards’ ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ which managed 21 weeks and a peak of 3. They too had 1 more hit to come. Adding in the weeks that Thelma Houston’s version of ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ managed, the song totalled 39 weeks which was the 4^th best any song charting in more than 1 version had managed. It was just 1 behind ‘Lara’s Theme (From Dr Zhivago)’ and ‘Cry To Me’ which both managed 40 weeks and sat tied second behind ‘Venus’ which managed 45.

Dead Or Alive’s ‘Brand New Lover’ became the 6^th of 7 songs which would re-enter the charts twice. The song had seen a run of 2 weeks, then a further run of 8 weeks before dropping off the charts. Both times it had been absent from the top 30 for just 1 week.

A-ha became the 30^th act to see more than 1 hit in the chart in the same week with 2 different pairings and they gave us the 94^th time we saw an act with hits in adjacent positions as ‘Cry Wolf’, the new entry this week, arrived at 28 while their ‘I’ve Been Losing You’ was unmoved at 27. ‘Cry Wolf’ was A-ha’s 4^th hit to make our charts. It was produced by Alan Tarney who had seen 10 hits on our charts as a song writer and 1 as part of the Tarney Spencer Band. This was his 7^th hit on our charts as a producer, although it should be noted that producers were not always listed. ‘Cry Wolf’ would go top 5 in the UK (#5), Denmark (#4), Ireland (4) and their native Norway where it got to number 2. The local DJ’s seemed to like the song as it topped the Radio 5, Capital 604 and Radio 702 charts. A-ha had now clocked up 40 weeks in the charts.

We had just 1 week with the US acts having more hits in the top 30 than the British act and this week we were back to the 2 nations being equal with both accounting for 11 each of the top 30.

It had been just over a year (58 weeks to be exact) since we last had less than 10 UK/US chart toppers in the top 30, but this week we dropped from 10 to 9. The 9 were ‘The Final Countdown’ (UK), ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ (US), ‘(I Just) Died In Your Arms’ (US), ‘I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)’ (both), ‘You Give Love A Bad Name’ (US), ‘True Blue’ (UK), ‘Shake You Down’ (US), ‘I Want To Wake Up With You’ (UK) and ‘The Lady In Red’ (UK).

Youtube playlist:

22 March 1987

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	10	The Final Countdown	–	Europe
2	3	6	Sometimes	–	Erasure
3	2	14	Everybody Have Fun Tonight	–	Wang Chung
4	4	7	Hi! Hi! Hi!	–	Sandra
5	7	7	Geronimo’s Cadillac	–	Modern Talking
6	5	15	A Matter of Trust	–	Billy Joel
7	6	16	Walk Like an Egyptian	–	Bangles
8	9	16	Two of Hearts	–	Stacey Q
9	16	3	Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)	–	Paul Lekakis
10	10	10	I’ll be Over You	–	Toto
11	14	4	All I Ask of You	–	Cliff Richard & Sarah Brightman
12	13	8	Forever Live and Die	–	Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
13	8	5	(I Just) Died in Your Arms	–	Cutting Crew
14	17	6	I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)	–	George Michael & Aretha Franklin
15	26	3	French Kissing in the U.S.A.	–	Debbie Harry
16	25	3	Montego Bay	–	Amazulu
17	12	20	Oh L’Amour	–	Erasure
18	15	9	World Shut Your Mouth	–	Julian Cope
19	20	5	You Give Love a Bad Name	–	Bon Jovi
20	11	16	True Blue	–	Madonna
21	18	21	Don’t Leave Me This Way	–	Communards
22	24	3	Is This Love?	–	Alison Moyet
23	27	6	Hip to be Square	–	Huey Lewis & The News
24	19	25	The Lady in Red	–	Chris de Burgh
25	28	2	Shake You Down	–	Gregory Abbott
26	22	21	I Want to Wake Up with You	–	Boris Gardiner
27	23	8	I’ve Been Losing You	–	A-Ha
28	30	10	Don’t Get Me Wrong	–	Pretenders
29	29	5	Ballerina Girl	–	Lionel Richie
30	New	1	Caravan of Love	–	Lovemasters

While Europe were telling us that it was ‘The Final Countdown’, they were busy counting up their weeks at 1 and they had now got to 3 as their hit held on to the top spot for another week. We were also counting up the number of top 30’s we had seen and the was the 200^th chart we had seen since it was extended from a top 20 to a top 30. Erasure’s ‘Sometimes’ moved up from 3 to 2 to put pressure on ‘The Final Countdown’.

Debbie Harry’s ‘French Kissing in the U.S.A.’ was the climber of the week as it moved up 11 from 26 to 15. The biggest climb Debbie’s group Blondie had managed was 7 places. There were 3 other star raters and these were Paul Lekakis’ ‘Boom Bom (Let’s Go Back To My Room)’ which moved up 7 from 16 to 9 and was the climber within the top 20, Amazulu’s ‘Montego Bay’ (up 9 from 25 to 16) and Huey Lewis & The News’ ‘Hip To Be Square’ (up 4 from 27 to 23). ‘French Kissing In The U.S.A.’ and ‘Montego Bay’ were the new entries into the top 20.

Madonna saw her 4^th biggest faller award as ‘True Blue’ dropped 9 from 11 to 20. This was the faller both within the top 20 and the top 30. Madonna was sitting on 104 weeks in the charts and this was the second highest weeks count for someone seeing their 4^th biggest faller. Only Modern Talking, who were on 106 weeks when they saw theirs, had a higher count.

The Communards’ ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ and Chris de Burgh’s ‘The Lady In Red’ were the 2 songs leaving the top 20. ‘The Lady In Red’ had been the oldest in that part of the charts for 5 weeks and that honour now fell to Erasure’s ‘Oh L’Amour’ which was on 19 top 20 weeks. ‘The Lady In Red’ was still the oldest in the overall chart sitting on 25 weeks and enjoying its 5^th week as the oldest in the top 30.

We saw only 1 song leave the top 30 and that was Dead Or Alive’s ‘Brand New Lover’ which had managed a total of 10 weeks and peaked at 19 in that time. It’s 10 weeks was made up of an initial run of 3, then after a week’s break it saw 7 more weeks.

The new entry ended the 7 week drought of SA hits that we had experienced as The Lovemasters’ ‘Caravan Of Love’ arrived at 30 this week. The song was a cover of a 1985 hit for Isley Jasper Isley. Their version made it to number 51 in the US. The following year UK act The Housemartins (which featured Norman Cook who would go on to become Fatboy Slim) sent an acapella version of the song to the top of the UK charts. It was the arrangement of this acapella version that The Lovemasters used with a guy called Gerald Priestly taking lead vocals. Priestly was a Brit who was living in SA at the time, but who has since returned to the UK.

We had seen 2 weeks now with the UK and US acts sitting tied for number of hits in the charts with both nations contributing 12, but with Dead Or Alive leaving and the new entry being by a local act, the Americans took the lead, beating the Brits by 12 to 11.

On the overall weeks count list we saw Lionel Richie move 1 ahead of Joe Dolan. Richie was in 15^th place on 124 weeks while Dolan dropped to 16^th and was joined there by Modern Talking whose total ticked over to 123, moving them up from 17 to 16.

Billy Joel became the 36^th person to reach 900 top 20 points. He sat on exactly 900 and was just 1 point behind our very own Four Jacks & A Jill.

Youtube playlist:

15 March 1987

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	9	The Final Countdown	–	Europe
2	2	13	Everybody Have Fun Tonight	–	Wang Chung
3	3	5	Sometimes	–	Erasure
4	6	6	Hi! Hi! Hi!	–	Sandra
5	5	14	A Matter of Trust	–	Billy Joel
6	4	15	Walk Like an Egyptian	–	Bangles
7	7	6	Geronimo’s Cadillac	–	Modern Talking
8	8	4	(I Just) Died in Your Arms	–	Cutting Crew
9	9	15	Two of Hearts	–	Stacey Q
10	11	9	I’ll be Over You	–	Toto
11	10	15	True Blue	–	Madonna
12	12	19	Oh L’Amour	–	Erasure
13	16	7	Forever Live and Die	–	Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
14	21	3	All I Ask of You	–	Cliff Richard & Sarah Brightman
15	15	8	World Shut Your Mouth	–	Julian Cope
16	25	2	Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)	–	Paul Lekakis
17	18	5	I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)	–	George Michael & Aretha Franklin
18	13	20	Don’t Leave Me This Way	–	Communards
19	14	24	The Lady in Red	–	Chris de Burgh
20	23	4	You Give Love a Bad Name	–	Bon Jovi
21	19	10	Brand New Lover	–	Dead or Alive
22	17	20	I Want to Wake Up with You	–	Boris Gardiner
23	24	7	I’ve Been Losing You	–	A-Ha
24	30	2	Is This Love?	–	Alison Moyet
25	RE	2	Montego Bay	–	Amazulu
26	29	2	French Kissing in the U.S.A.	–	Debbie Harry
27	20	5	Hip to be Square	–	Huey Lewis & The News
28	New	1	Shake You Down	–	Gregory Abbott
29	27	4	Ballerina Girl	–	Lionel Richie
30	28	9	Don’t Get Me Wrong	–	Pretenders

Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ spent a second week at 1 with the previous chart topper, Wang Chung’s ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’ stuck at 2. Erasure’s ‘Sometimes’ was also unmoved at 3 as was Billy Joel’s ‘A Matter Of Trust’ at 5. It was only Sandra’s ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’ swapping places with The Bangles’ ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ with the former moving up from 6 to 4, that prevented us from having an unchanged top 5.

Paul Lekakis’ ‘Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)’ was the climber of the week as it moved up 9 from 25 to 16. Cliff Richard and Sarah Brightman’s ‘All I Ask Of You’ and Alison Moyet’s ‘Is This Love?’ were the other star raters this week with the former climbing 7 from 21 to 14 and the latter moving up 6 from 30 to 24. ‘Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)’ and ‘All I Ask Of You’ were joined by Bon Jovi’s ‘You Give Love A Bad Name’ in being the new entries into the top 20. OMD’s ‘Forever Live And Die’ was the climber within the top 20 as it moved up 3 from 16 to 13.

Huey Lewis & The News’ ‘Hip To Be Square’ was the faller of the week as it dropped 7 from 20 to 27. It had spent just 1 week in the top 20 and spent that week at position 20, making it the 42^nd song to see a top 20 run of just 1 week at number 20. Huey Lewis & The News were seeing their 45^th week in the charts and this was their first faller award. This was the 5^th highest weeks count for an act seeing their first faller although it should be noted that Cyndi Lauper (who’s chart run ended this week) had managed 59 weeks and had never seen a faller of the week (this was the record run with no faller so far).

The Communards’ ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ and Chris de Burgh’s ‘The Lady In Red’ were the fallers inside the top 20 and they both dropped 5 to land at 18 and 19 respectively. Dead Or Alive’s ‘Brand New Lover’ and Boris Gardiner’s ‘I Want To Wake Up With You’ along with ‘Hip To Be Square’ (mentioned above) were the songs leaving the top 20.

‘The Lady In Red’ was enjoying its 22^nd week in the top 20 and its 24^th in the charts overall. It had been the oldest in the top 20 for 5 weeks and the oldest in the top 30 for 4.

Billy Idol’s ‘To Be A Lover’ was the first of 2 songs leaving the charts this week. It had been with us for 18 weeks and peaked at 5. He would see further chart action later.

As mentioned above, Cyndi Lauper saw her SA chart career come to an end. This was due to the departure of ‘True Colours’ from the charts. Her 59 weeks came from 4 hits with ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ giving her a best peak of 3.

Amazulu’s ‘Montego Bay’ was the 65^th song to re-enter the charts as it arrived back in the top 30 at 25 this week, 5 places higher than its previous peak of 30. It was the 4^th song in 1987 to return to the chart and this was 6^th year to see at least 4 new entries. The record was 15 which we saw in 1972 and 1976 was the only year where we had not seen a re-entry at all.

The other entry into the chart was Gregory Abbott’s ‘Shake You Down’. Abbott’s recording career apparently started on a small independent label where he performed a duet with a yet to be famous Whitney Houston and Whitney’s mother Cissy Houston on backing vocals. While a number of websites refer to this, none name the album or the track. ‘Shake You Down’ remains Abbott’s biggest hit to date, peaking at 6 in the UK and topping the US charts for 1 week. It would just miss out in Canada where it went to 2 and The Netherlands and New Zealand where it peaked at 3. It would top the charts in Zimbabwe and get to 4 on the Capital 604 charts. It would not make the Radio 702 nor the Radio 5 charts. In 2010 Billboard magazine would vote it the 21^st ‘Sexiest Song Of All Time’.

‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ and ‘I Want To Wake Up With You’ both hit 20 weeks in the charts. 167 song so far had managed this. ‘I Want To Wake Up With You’ was the 4^th song by a Jamaican act to reach this milestone although 2 of the 4 were by Boney M which some may choose to classify as German. The only other Jamaican to see a 20 weeker was Bob Marley who’s ‘Buffalo Soldier’ managed 22 weeks. The 2 Boney M hits (‘Rivers Of Babylon’ and ‘We Kill The World’) were the only ones so far by Jamaican acts to manage 20 weeks in the top 20.

Lionel Richie caught up with Joe Dolan for weeks in the charts and the 2 acts sat tied 15^th overall with 123 week each to their respective names. Billy Joel, meanwhile, moved into the top 30 of the top 30 points list. He was sitting on 1,870 points and moved past Engelbert Humperdink who was on 1,867.

Cliff Richard saw his top 20 weeks total reach 170, but he was stuck in 3^rd place, sitting 15 behind Tom Jones and 38 behind Abba who topped the list with 203.

Youtube playlist:

8 March 1987

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	2	8	The Final Countdown	–	Europe
2	1	12	Everybody Have Fun Tonight	–	Wang Chung
3	8	4	Sometimes	–	Erasure
4	3	14	Walk Like an Egyptian	–	Bangles
5	4	13	A Matter of Trust	–	Billy Joel
6	7	5	Hi! Hi! Hi!	–	Sandra
7	12	5	Geronimo’s Cadillac	–	Modern Talking
8	17	3	(I Just) Died in Your Arms	–	Cutting Crew
9	5	14	Two of Hearts	–	Stacey Q
10	6	14	True Blue	–	Madonna
11	11	8	I’ll be Over You	–	Toto
12	10	18	Oh L’Amour	–	Erasure
13	9	19	Don’t Leave Me This Way	–	Communards
14	14	23	The Lady in Red	–	Chris de Burgh
15	15	7	World Shut Your Mouth	–	Julian Cope
16	18	6	Forever Live and Die	–	Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
17	13	19	I Want to Wake Up with You	–	Boris Gardiner
18	25	4	I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)	–	George Michael & Aretha Franklin
19	20	9	Brand New Lover	–	Dead or Alive
20	21	4	Hip to be Square	–	Huey Lewis & The News
21	28	2	All I Ask of You	–	Cliff Richard & Sarah Brightman
22	16	12	True Colors	–	Cyndi Lauper
23	29	3	You Give Love a Bad Name	–	Bon Jovi
24	RE	6	I’ve Been Losing You	–	A-Ha
25	New	1	Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)	–	Paul Lekakis
26	19	18	To be a Lover	–	Billy Idol
27	27	3	Ballerina Girl	–	Lionel Richie
28	22	8	Don’t Get Me Wrong	–	Pretenders
29	New	1	French Kissing in the U.S.A.	–	Debbie Harry
30	New	1	Is This Love?	–	Alison Moyet

Well this week was the final countdown. But don’t panic, it was Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ at 1, we still have a good number of charts to come. The previous chart topper, Wang Chung’s ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’, dropped to 2 after 2 weeks at 1. ‘The Final Countdown’ was the 9^th song by a Swedish act to top our charts and the first by an act that wasn’t Abba. Sweden and Ireland were tied highest of the non-big 3 nations for number of number 1s. Ireland’s 9 came from 5 different acts.

For a second week running we saw the Cutting Crew’s ‘(I Just) Died In Your Arms’ take the climber award as it moved up a further 9 from 17 to 8. It was obviously the climber both within the top 20 and top 30. The other star rater climbs this week were by Erasure’s ‘Sometimes’ (up 5 from 8 to 3), Modern Talking’s ‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’ (up 5 from 12 to 7), Aretha Franklin and George Michael’s ‘I Knew You Were Waiting’ (up 7 from 25 to 18), Cliff Richard and Sarah Brightman’s ‘All I Ask Of You’ (up 7 from 28 to 21) and Bon Jovi’s ‘You Give Love A Band Name’ (up 6 from 29 to 23). It was Modern Talking’s 15^th star rater climb and they were the 16^th act to reach this total, but ahead of them was Cliff Richard who was picking up his 19^th. Only 5 acts had managed 19 so far and [spoiler alert] only 1 more would do so. Cliff was still some way off the record of 28 which Abba held. ‘I Knew You Were Waiting’ was a new entry into the top 20 and it was accompanied by Huey Lewis & The News’ ‘Hip To Be Square’.

Billy Idol’s ‘To Be A Lover’ was the faller of the week as it dropped 7 from 19 to 26. It was joined in leaving the top 20 by Cyndi Lauper’s ‘True Colours’ which fell from 16 to 22. Within the top 20 it was a 4-way tie for faller with Boris Gardiner’s ‘I Want To Wake Up With You’, The Communards’ ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’, Madonna’s ‘True Blue’ and Stacey Q’s ‘Two Of Hearts’ which all fell 4 places to land at 17, 13, 10 and 9 respectively.

Chris de Burgh’s ‘The Lady In Red’ continued as the oldest in both the top 20 and the top 30. It was on 21 top 20 weeks and 23 top 30 weeks and had been the oldest in those parts of the charts for 4 and 3 weeks respectively.

Amazulu’s ‘Montego Bay’ became the 7^th song to have a run of 1 week at number 30 as it dropped off the charts after being a new entry last week. We were not done with Amazulu just yet.

We were, however, seeing the last of the Human League on our charts as their ‘Human’ also left the top 30. It had been with us for 16 weeks and peaked at 9. They saw 4 songs chart, spent 46 weeks with us and managed to see a best peak of 2 with their first hit, ‘Don’t You Want Me’.

Also finishing their SA chart career was Paul Simon as ‘You Can Call Me Al’ left the charts. It managed a run of 21 weeks and peaked at 2. He had managed 3 solo hits, 51 weeks and 3 weeks at 1 made up of 1 week with ‘Mother And Child Reunion’ and 2 weeks with ‘Take Me To The Madi Gras’. ‘You Can Call Me Al’ spent 5 non consecutive weeks at 2, stuck behind ‘The Lady In Red’ which sadly prevented him from having a 100% record for number 1s as a solo act. He also had hits as one half of Simon & Garfunkel which adding those into his stats gave him 7 hits, 100 weeks, 3 number 1’s (‘The Sounds Of Silence’ being the only Simon & Garfunkel hit to op the charts) which gave him a total of 4 weeks at 1.

Last of the leavers was Modern Talking’s ‘Atlantis Is Calling’ which peaked at 12 during a 15 week run. This was the lowest weeks count for their first 5 hits (‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’ was still in the charts so has been ignore for this), but was their second lowest peak, going 1 place higher than ‘Cheri Cheri Lady’ which got to 13.

A-ha’s ‘I’ve Been Losing You’ had seen a run of 5 weeks and a peak of 25 in its first run in the chart. This week it came crashing back into the top 30 after being absent for just 1 week and was already seeing a new peak position as it landed at 24. It was the 64^th song to return to the charts and the 11^th in the top 30 era to do so.

The first new entry was Paul Lekakis’ ‘Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back To My Room)’. The song would see a run of 5 weeks at the top of the Australian charts and it also fared well in Canada (#4) and New Zealand (#7), but was less successful in his native US (#43) and the UK (#60). The only local chart it made was the Radio 702 one where it got to number 7. Despite making further records, this was pretty much Lekakis’ only hit and he ended up becoming a male prostitute in Hollywood in mid 90’s, but eventually quit that life and found some roles in lesser known movies.

While Blondie’s SA chart career ended a little while back, their charismatic lead singer, Debbie Harry, managed to return to the charts with a solo hit in the form of ‘French Kissin In The USA’. In some countries it was simply called ‘French Kissin’. The song was written by Chuck Lorre who would go on to have success creating TV comedies such as ‘Two And A Half Men’ and ‘The Big Bang Theory’. The video for the song also has a TV comedy connection as Katey Sagal who played Peggy Bundy in ‘Married…With Children’ appears in video. The song would go top 10 in Australia (#4), Ireland (#8), New Zealnd (#2) and the UK (#8). To date it remains her only solo top 10 hit in the UK. In the US it didn’t fare very well, only getting to 57 there. It would get to 5 on the Capital 604 charts, 15 on the Radio 5 ones and 18 on Radio 702. ‘French Kissin’ In The USA’ was the 800^th song by an American act to make our charts.

The last new entry was also by a woman who had seen her first SA chart success as part of a group but was also having solo success. Unlike Debbie Harry, who was having her first solo success, Alison Moyet (who had been a member of Yazoo) was seeing her second solo hit. Her new one was ‘Is This Love?’ which was the first single from her second album, ‘Raindancing’. The song was written by the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, however, he used the name Jean Guiot for this credit. It was his first non-Eurythmics hit as songwriter. ‘Is This Love?’ would go top 10 in Belgium (#5), Ireland (#4), New Zealand (#7), Norway (#3), Sweden (#5) and the UK (#3). It would go to 5 on the Capital 604 charts, 2 on the Radio 5 ones and top the 702 charts.

The movement on and off the charts meant that the US and UK acts both had 12 hits on the charts. This was the 1^st time in 44 weeks that the 2 nations had contributed the same number of songs to our charts, but in that 44 weeks we had seen them change places 6 times for who had the most.

The Bangles celebrated getting to 40 weeks in the charts while ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ clocked up its 37^th week from the 2 versions of the song that had charted. This moved it into tied 4^th place with ‘Timothy’ for weeks by songs charting in different versions. ‘Timothy’ had been a hit for Carike Keuzenkamp and Four Jacks & A Jill.

Acts from the UK saw their top 20 weeks total move past the 7,500 mark and it was Julian Cope’s ‘World Shut Your Mouth’ which had the honour of reaching that total for the Brits.

Youtube playlist:

1 March 1987

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	11	Everybody Have Fun Tonight	–	Wang Chung
2	4	7	The Final Countdown	–	Europe
3	2	13	Walk Like an Egyptian	–	Bangles
4	3	12	A Matter of Trust	–	Billy Joel
5	7	13	Two of Hearts	–	Stacey Q
6	6	13	True Blue	–	Madonna
7	11	4	Hi! Hi! Hi!	–	Sandra
8	12	3	Sometimes	–	Erasure
9	5	18	Don’t Leave Me This Way	–	Communards
10	9	17	Oh L’Amour	–	Erasure
11	17	7	I’ll be Over You	–	Toto
12	13	4	Geronimo’s Cadillac	–	Modern Talking
13	10	18	I Want to Wake Up with You	–	Boris Gardiner
14	8	22	The Lady in Red	–	Chris de Burgh
15	15	6	World Shut Your Mouth	–	Julian Cope
16	14	11	True Colors	–	Cyndi Lauper
17	24	2	(I Just) Died in Your Arms	–	Cutting Crew
18	19	5	Forever Live and Die	–	Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
19	18	17	To be a Lover	–	Billy Idol
20	20	8	Brand New Lover	–	Dead or Alive
21	27	3	Hip to be Square	–	Huey Lewis & The News
22	23	7	Don’t Get Me Wrong	–	Pretenders
23	22	15	Atlantis is Calling	–	Modern Talking
24	21	21	You Can Call Me Al	–	Paul Simon
25	25	3	I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)	–	George Michael & Aretha Franklin
26	16	16	Human	–	Human League
27	28	2	Ballerina Girl	–	Lionel Richie
28	New	1	All I Ask of You	–	Cliff Richard & Sarah Brightman
29	29	2	You Give Love a Bad Name	–	Bon Jovi
30	New	1	Montego Bay	–	Amazulu

Wang Chung’s ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’ enjoyed a second week at 1 but was already coming under pressure from Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ which moved up from 4 to 2.

The Cutting Crew’s ‘(I Just) Died In Your Arms’ was the climber of the week as it moved up 7 from 24 to 17. It would be the only new entry into the top 20 this week. Within the top 20 it was Toto’s ‘I’ll Be Over You’ which took the award as it moved up 6 from 17 to 11. There were 3 other star raters and these were Sandra’s ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’ (up 4 from 11 to 7), Erasure’s ‘Sometimes’ (up 4 from 12 to 8) and Huey Lewis & The News’ ‘Hip To Be Square’ (up 6 from 27 to 21).

The biggest fall was the song leaving the top 20 and that was the Human League’s ‘Human’ which dropped 10 from 16 to 26. It was the 43^rd song to suffer a fall of 10 or more in a week. The Human League were on 46 weeks in the charts and this was their first time with the faller award. This was the 4^th highest weeks count for an act having its first biggest faller. Albert Hammond had been on 47 weeks, Miami Sound Machine were on 50 and The Seekers held the record of being on 57 weeks which, until this week was the longest run any act had seen, however, this week Cyndi Lauper moved on to 58 weeks in the charts and she was yet to see a biggest faller.

Chris de Burgh’s ‘The Lady In Red’ was the top 20 faller as it dropped 6 from 8 to 14. It was the oldest in both the top 20 and the top 30 sitting on 20 weeks in the former and 22 in the latter. It was the 97^th song to accumulate 20 top 20 weeks.

We were losing A-ha’s ‘I’ve Been Losing You’ which dropped off the charts after 11 weeks and a peak of 23. This equalled the lowest peak for a song spending 11 weeks on the charts and this was previously managed by Gino Vannelli’s ‘Black Cars’. A-ha’s 2 other hits so far had both gone top 10. They would return to the charts at a later date.

Also going was Duran Duran’s ‘Notorious’ which spent 13 weeks on the charts and made it up to 14. This marked the end of the SA chart road for them. They had managed 6 hits, spent a total of 78 weeks in the chart and spent 1 week at 1 with ‘Wild Boys’.

The first new entry was the 6^th song from an Andrew Lloyd-Weber musical to make our charts. Taken from ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’, All I Ask Of You’ gave Cliff Richard his 25^th hit on our charts and he was way out in front for number of hits, now 7 ahead of second placed Abba. Cliff shared credit on the single with Sarah Brightman who had seen 1 hit previously in the shape of ‘I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper’. The song was performed by Brightman and Steve Barton in the musical and Barton appears on the soundtrack album, but the version recorded with Cliff joining Sarah was the one that was released as a single. It would top the charts in Ireland and would peak at 3 in the UK, 8 in Zimbabwe and 24 in Australia. It would not feature on any of the local radio station charts. In 1988 Barbra Streisand would record a cover of the track which would peak at 77 on the UK charts in early 1989.

The second new entry was the 56^th song to chart in different versions. ‘Montego Bay’ first hit our charts back in 1970 when Bobby Bloom’s version made it to number 5. This week the song returned but it was Amazulu who brought us this new version. It was Amazulu’s 2^nd SA chart hit and a 21^st for Jeff Barry who was one of the songwriters on the track. Barry moved into tied 6^th place alongside Maurice Gibb on the list of number of hits by a songwriter. Amazulu’s version of the track would scrape a peak of 90 in the US (Bloom’s version had managed to get to 8) and peaked at 16 in the UK (where Bloom’s version got to 3). It would not bother any of the local radio charts.

OMD were seeing a new high in the charts as their ‘Forever Live And Die’ moved up to 18, beating their previous best -peak of 19 which ‘Joan Of Arc (Maid Of Orleans)’ had managed.

The German acts clocked up their 600^th week in the chart and, counting from the top of the chart down, it was Modern Talking’s ‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’ which had the honour of picking up that milestone for them. This was the fastest 100 of the 6 that the Germans had managed, only taking them 39 weeks to get to this total. Their previous best had been getting from 400 to 500 which took 60 weeks.

We saw a number of artists reach weeks milestones too and they were Erasure who hit 20, Dead Or Alive who got to 30, Sandra who celebrated 50, Billy Joel who ticked over to 110 and Modern Talking who made it to 120.

Youtube playlist:

22 February 1987

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	2	10	Everybody Have Fun Tonight	–	Wang Chung
2	1	12	Walk Like an Egyptian	–	Bangles
3	3	11	A Matter of Trust	–	Billy Joel
4	7	6	The Final Countdown	–	Europe
5	6	17	Don’t Leave Me This Way	–	Communards
6	5	12	True Blue	–	Madonna
7	9	12	Two of Hearts	–	Stacey Q
8	4	21	The Lady in Red	–	Chris de Burgh
9	8	16	Oh L’Amour	–	Erasure
10	10	17	I Want to Wake Up with You	–	Boris Gardiner
11	11	3	Hi! Hi! Hi!	–	Sandra
12	21	2	Sometimes	–	Erasure
13	14	3	Geronimo’s Cadillac	–	Modern Talking
14	15	10	True Colors	–	Cyndi Lauper
15	12	5	World Shut Your Mouth	–	Julian Cope
16	16	15	Human	–	Human League
17	19	6	I’ll be Over You	–	Toto
18	13	16	To be a Lover	–	Billy Idol
19	28	4	Forever Live and Die	–	Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
20	20	7	Brand New Lover	–	Dead or Alive
21	18	20	You Can Call Me Al	–	Paul Simon
22	17	14	Atlantis is Calling	–	Modern Talking
23	24	6	Don’t Get Me Wrong	–	Pretenders
24	New	1	(I Just) Died in Your Arms	–	Cutting Crew
25	22	2	I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)	–	George Michael & Aretha Franklin
26	26	13	Notorious	–	Duran Duran
27	27	2	Hip to be Square	–	Huey Lewis & The News
28	New	1	Ballerina Girl	–	Lionel Richie
29	New	1	You Give Love a Bad Name	–	Bon Jovi
30	25	5	I’ve Been Losing You	–	A-Ha

After 3 weeks in a row and 4 weeks in total at 1, The Bangles’ ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ dropped from the number 1 spot to 2 and the new number 1 was Wang Chung’s ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’ which moved up from 2. Billy Joel set a new record for weeks in the charts without ever getting to number 1 as he moved onto 109 weeks, breaking Leo Sayer’s record. He was tantalisingly close to ending his chart topping drought as his ‘A Matter Of Trust’ sat at 3.

The climber of the week award was shared between Erasure’s ‘Sometimes’ and OMD’s ‘Forever Live And Die’ which both moved up 9 landing at 12 and 19 respectively. These were the only new entries into the top 20 this week and were also the only star raters. Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ moved up 3 from 7 to 4 to take the top 20 climber award.

The biggest fall was 5 places which 3 songs managed. They were A-ha’s ‘I’ve Been Losing You’, Modern Talking’s ‘Atlantis Is Calling’ and Billy Idol’s ‘To Be A Lover’ which ended up at 30, 22 and 18 respectively. ‘To Be A Lover’ was the only one of the 3 completing its fall within the top 20. ‘Atlantis Is Calling’ left the top 20 and was accompanied by Paul Simon’s ‘You Can Call Me Al’.

‘The Lady In Red’ spent a second week as the oldest in the top 20. It was on 19 weeks in that part of the chart. It also became the oldest in the top 30 having clocked up 21 weeks in that part of the chart. The previous oldest in the top 30, ‘Venus’ was one of 3 songs leaving the chart this week, more on that in a minute. Chris de Burgh was celebrating his 40^th week in the chart and he was yet to experience a biggest faller. He was the 12^th act to manage such a run and the 3^rd in the space of 6 weeks (The Human League and Huey Lewis & The News being the other 2 in that period).

‘Venus’ had spent 25 weeks in the charts and 3 of those were spent at number 1. Between the 3 versions of the song it managed 45 weeks (the record to date for a song charting in more than 1 version) and 7 of those had been at 1 with the other 4 coming from Shocking Blue’s version. It was the tied second best weeks at 1 for a song charting in more than 1 version, equalling ‘Sunglasses’ (all 7 weeks coming from Hilary’s version and none from Al Debbo’s Afrikaans version, ‘Sonbrilletjies’). Only ‘Lara’s Theme (From Dr Zhivago)’ had managed better. It clocked up 8 weeks, 4 of which were from Roger Williams instrumental version and the other 4 come from the Ray Conniff Singer’s vocal version entitled ‘Somewhere My Love’. Bananarama still had a couple more hits to come.

We also bid farewell to Bruce Hornsby & The Range’s ‘The Way It Is’ which managed 17 weeks and peaked at 13. They would return to the charts at a later date.

The last of the leavers was Berlin’s ‘Take My Breath Away’ which had spent 22 weeks in the charts and peaked at 2. This would be their only SA chart hit.

The first new entry was ‘(I Just) Died In Your Arms’ by British band Cutting Crew. Allegedly the idea for the song was conceived by the band’s lead singer, Nick van Eede, while he was having sex with his girlfriend. And nearly 9 months to the day after it entered the UK charts (where it peaked at 4), it would top the US charts and remains their biggest hit to date in both countries. It would also top the charts in Canada, Norway, Finland and Poland. In 2013 a cover by UK band Bastille appeared as a bonus track on the Virgin Records compilation called ‘Virgin Records: 40 Years Of Disruptions’ which celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the label.

Lionel Richie became the 43^rd act to clock up 8 hits as his ‘Ballerina Girl’ entered the charts this week. The song was from his ‘Dancing On The Ceiling’ album and was the 4^th hit off that album to make our charts. This was the 3^rd album in the top 30 era so far to produce 4 SA chart hits. The previous 2 were Wham!’s ‘Make It Big’ which gave us ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’, ‘Careless Whisper’, ‘Freedom’ and ‘Everything She Wants’ and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born In The USA’ which produced ‘Dancing In The Dark’, ‘Born In The USA’, ‘I’m On Fire’ and ‘Glory Days’. Some may wish to exclude ‘Make It Big’ as the version of ‘Careless Whisper’ on the Wham! album was different to the re-recorded single version that was released under the name George Michael and which made our charts. ‘Ballerina Girl’ would give Richie a number 7 hit in the US and got to 17 in the UK. The only other top 20 showing I can find is in France where it got to number 18. It would peak at 3 on the Radio 5 charts and get to 5 on the 702 ones but failed to make the Capital 604 charts. ‘Ballerina Girl’ was the 300^th song by a solo US male artist to make the charts. It had taken them 272 weeks to get from 250 hits to 300 and this was the slowest 50 hits of the 6 they had managed to date. It was also the 7^th year running that Richie had featured on our charts and he was the 6^th act to manage such a run.

The final new entry saw Bon Jovi make their SA chart debut. Their hit was ‘You Give Love A Bad Name’. The song was originally written by a guy called Desmond Child as ‘If You Were A Woman (And I Was A Man)’ which was recorded by Bonnie Tyler and scraped a number 78 peak in the UK charts. Child (who had already seen SA chart success as a songwriter with a credit on Kiss’ ‘I Was Made For Lovin’You’) then re-wrote the lyrics  along with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora (Bon Jovi’s guitarist) and, with a slight change to the tune, ‘You Give Love A Bad Name’ was born. This had far more success as it topped the US charts for 1 week and went top 5 in Belgium (#4), Canada (#2), The Netherlands (#2) and Zimbabwe (#3). It would make it to 3 on the Capital 604 charts, 6 on 702 and 12 on Radio 5.

After 3 weeks with 19 hits being by groups (1 off the record) we dropped to 18 this week.

Paul Simon’s ‘You Can Call Me Al’ became the 165^th song to reach 20 weeks in the charts while Chris de Burgh (as mentioned above) and Toto reach 40 weeks in the charts. Madonna celebrated reaching a century of weeks and she was the 28^th act to do so. Lionel Richie hit 120 but was unmoved in 16^th place on the weeks count list, sitting 3 behind Joe Dolan who was the next act above him. Modern Talking moved into tied 17^th place on that list alongside Creedence Clearwater Revival with both acts having accumulated 118 weeks.

We had now been 14 weeks with no local hits in the top 20 and this equalled the 3^rd biggest gap to date that we had seen.

Cyndi Lauper had now accumulated a total of 57 weeks in the charts and was yet to see a biggest faller award. This equalled the record to date which The Seekers had set way back on the 21 April 1967. The Seekers picked up their first faller in their 58^th week on the charts.

Youtube playlist:

15 February 1987

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	11	Walk Like an Egyptian	–	Bangles
2	2	9	Everybody Have Fun Tonight	–	Wang Chung
3	6	10	A Matter of Trust	–	Billy Joel
4	3	20	The Lady in Red	–	Chris de Burgh
5	4	11	True Blue	–	Madonna
6	5	16	Don’t Leave Me This Way	–	Communards
7	12	5	The Final Countdown	–	Europe
8	7	15	Oh L’Amour	–	Erasure
9	10	11	Two of Hearts	–	Stacey Q
10	8	16	I Want to Wake Up with You	–	Boris Gardiner
11	25	2	Hi! Hi! Hi!	–	Sandra
12	18	4	World Shut Your Mouth	–	Julian Cope
13	9	15	To be a Lover	–	Billy Idol
14	29	2	Geronimo’s Cadillac	–	Modern Talking
15	15	9	True Colors	–	Cyndi Lauper
16	13	14	Human	–	Human League
17	14	13	Atlantis is Calling	–	Modern Talking
18	11	19	You Can Call Me Al	–	Paul Simon
19	19	5	I’ll be Over You	–	Toto
20	23	6	Brand New Lover	–	Dead or Alive
21	New	1	Sometimes	–	Erasure
22	New	1	I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)	–	George Michael & Aretha Franklin
23	17	22	Take My Breath Away	–	Berlin
24	21	5	Don’t Get Me Wrong	–	Pretenders
25	27	4	I’ve Been Losing You	–	A-Ha
26	16	12	Notorious	–	Duran Duran
27	New	1	Hip to be Square	–	Huey Lewis & The News
28	30	3	Forever Live and Die	–	Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
29	24	17	The Way it Is	–	Bruce Hornsby & The Range
30	22	25	Venus	–	Bananarama

The Bangles’ ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ spent a 3^rd straight week at 1 and, adding in its 1 week at 1 before being interrupted by Chris de Burgh’s ‘The Lady In Red’, it had now managed a total of 4 weeks at the top of the charts. Last week it beat their previous chart topper for total weeks at 1 as ‘Manic Monday’ had managed 2 weeks at the top of the charts. This week it beat their previous best for consecutive weeks at 1. Wang Chung’s ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’ lurked at 2 for a second week.

Modern Talking’s ‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’ made a massive 15 place leap from 29 to 14 to take the climber of the week award. This was only the 4^th time we had seen a song climb 15 or more in a week. The previous ones to manage this were The Monkees’ ‘I’m A Believer’ and the Mike Curb Congregation’s ‘Burning Bridges’ which managed a 16 place climb and The Sweet’s ‘Co-Co’ which held the record, managing a 17 place climb. Modern Talking’s effort would be the all time record for a song by an act from a non-big 3 nation and it was the best we had seen in the 80’s. However, they had the 2^nd highest weeks count for an act picking up their 6^th biggest climber award. They were on 115 weeks which was 9 less than record holder Cliff Richard.

Sandra’s ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’ set a new record for number of places climbed without being the biggest climber as it moved up 14 from 25 to 11. Alphaville’s ‘Forever Young’, Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’ and Agnetha Faltskog’s ‘Wrap Your Arms Around Me’ had been the previous record holders all managing 12 place climbs. Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ and Julian Cope’s ‘World Shut Your Mouth’ were the other star raters with the former climbing 5 from 12 to 7 and the latter moving up 6 from 18 to 12 making it the climber within the top 20.

Duran Duran’s ‘Notorious’ dropped 10 from 16 to 26 to take the faller of the week award while it was Paul Simon’s ‘You Can Call Me Al’ which took the award inside the top 20 with a 7 place drop from 11 to 18. Duran Duran were the second act after Starship to see 2 falls of 10 or more in a week. They had previously seen a drop of 10 with ‘A View To A Kill’.

‘Notorious’ was joined by Berlin’s ‘Take My Breath Away’ and Huey Lewis & The News’ ‘Stuck With You’ in dropping out the top 20. ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’ and ‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’ as mentioned above, moved into the top 20 and they were joined by Dead Or Alive’s ‘Brand New Lover’.

‘Take My Breath Away’ had been the oldest in the top 20 and that honour now fell to Chris de Burgh’s ‘The Lady In Red’ which had been in that part of the chart for 18 weeks.

‘Stuck With You’ not only left the top 20 but also left the top 30. It was the 13^th and [spoiler alert] would be the last to leave the top 30 from inside the top 20. It had spent 18 weeks in the charts and peaked at 5 which was 1 place lower than their only other hit to date, ‘The Power Of Love’. They still had a couple more hits to come.

Also going was Boys Don’t Cry’s ‘I Wanna Be A Cowboy’ which managed 16 weeks and a peak of 11. They too would return to the charts at a later date.

Peter Cetera’s ‘Glory Of Love’ manged 27 weeks and a peak of 3. This would be his only solo hit to make the charts. He did, however, manage 1 more week with this one solo hit than with the 3 hits he had as a member of Chicago. Chicago did manage to top the charts with ‘If You Leave Me Now’ which beat Cetera’s solo peak. In total he managed 53 weeks adding his solo career to his career as a member of the band.

‘Glory Of Love’ had been the oldest on last week’s chart and we now had to look to Bananarama’s ‘Venus’ as the granddaddy (or should that be grandmommy?) of the top 30 as it stood on 25 weeks, but had dropped 8 places to 30 so it was unlikely be the oldest for very long.

Erasure had the honour of being the 100^th act to see more than 1 hit in the chart in the same week as their ‘Sometimes’ joined ‘Oh L’Amour’ which sat at 8 this week. ‘Sometimes’ would be the song that gave them their first major UK hit as it went to 2 on the charts there. Their previous 3 singles had only managed a best peak of 55 (‘Who Needs Love Like That’). ‘Sometimes’ would top the charts in Spain and also fare well in Belgium (#2), Denmark (#9), Finland (#5), Germany (#2), Ireland (#3), The Netherlands (#2) and Switzerland (#3). To date it remains their only hit to make the French charts where it made it to 39. ‘Sometimes’ was the 33^rd title to belong to at least 2 different songs to make our charts. We had seen Caroline du Preez and Tommy Dell chart as a duet with a different song called ‘Sometimes’. Erasure’s song would get to 4 on the Radio 702 charts, and peak at 3 on both the Capital 604 and Radio 5 ones.

15 weeks back we had seen Boris Gardiner set a new record gap between hits as we had to wait 856 weeks between his ‘Elizabethan Reggae’ and ‘I Want To Wake Up With You’. This week we saw that record being broken by Aretha Franklin who was last seen on our charts 949 weeks earlier with ‘I Say A Little Prayer’ which spent its last week on the chart on 6 December 1968. This week she returned with her duet with George Michael, ‘I Knew You Were Waiting’. It was Aretha’s 2^nd SA chart hit and Michael’s 3^rd. Michael had been approached to write and produce a song with Aretha but was busy with Wham! at the time and also considered himself unworthy of writing something for Aretha to sing. Consequently, ‘I Knew You Were Waiting’ was the first single featuring him that he did not have a hand in writing. Instead it was written by Simon Climie and Dennis Morgan who penned the track. Climie was not too far away from seeing hits as part of Climie Fisher. ‘I Knew You Were Waiting’ would top the charts for 2 weeks on both sides of the Atlantic and would also get to number 1 in Australia, Belgium, Ireland, The Netherlands and Zimbabwe. It would have a clean sweep of number 1s across the Radio 5, Radio 702 and Capital 604 charts. In charting as part of a duet George Michael became the 8^th person to chart as part of a group, as a solo act and as part of a duet. The previous people to manage this were Diana Ross (this counts her credit as ‘Diana Ross & The Supremes as being in a group), Glenys Lynne, Paul McCartney (who had charted in 2 different groups), Lionel Richie, Stevie Nicks, Phil Collins and Stevie Wonder (who had been in Dionne & Friends, you may not wish to count that). These stats ignore acts who were part of the conglomeration of acts who participated in the Band Aid and USA For Africa projects.

Huey Lewis & The News became the 31^st act to replace themselves on the charts as their new one, ‘Hip To Be Square’ was a new entry coming in in the place of the departing ‘Stuck With You’. ‘Hip To Be Square’ would feature in the film ‘American Psycho’ and would initially appear on the soundtrack album, but this was quickly pulled as those releasing the soundtrack had only secured the rights to include it in the film, but not the soundtrack. A few copies containing the song were, however, sold. ‘Hip To Be Square’ would make it to number 3 in the US while elsewhere it made top 20 in Australia (#17), Canada (#14), Finland (#12), New Zealand (#9). On the local radio charts it made it to 3 on Radio 5, 7 on 702 and 8 on Capital 604.

We had now had at least 1 hit by a female act on the charts for 200 consecutive weeks. This was only the second such run the women had managed so far. The previous run had gone on to last 323 before we went one week with no solo female act. The current run started just after that 1 week.

The ding-dong battle between the Brits and the Americans for most hits in the charts continued as it swayed back in favour of the Brits who had 12 in this week’s charts as opposed to the American’s 11. It had been the other way round last week.

‘The Lady In Red’ became the 164^th song to reach 20 weeks in the charts. Just over 7% of the songs that had charted so far had made it to 20 weeks. It also became the 72^nd song to reach 300 top 20 points as it moved on to 305.

George Michael’s new one moved him on to 50 weeks in the charts. 114 acts so far had reached this milestone. Billy Joel reached 108 weeks and now equalled Leo Sayer’s record for weeks in the charts without ever seeing a number 1. Modern Talking moved into 18^th place on the weeks count list. They were on 116 and with 2 in the charts they leapfrogged The Sweet and The Troggs who dropped into tied 19^th place.

Madonna had now featured in our charts for 30 weeks running and she was second act to manage 2 runs of 30 weeks in the charts. Modern Talking had seen their second such run just 2 weeks earlier.

‘Don’t Leave Me With Way’ had now clocked up 34 weeks between the 2 different versions of the song that had charted and this now moved it into tied 5^th place on the list of weeks by songs charting in more than 1 version. It shared 5^th place with ‘Master Jack’ which had charted for Four Jacks and A Jill and Trini Lopez and the parody thereof by Al Debbo called ‘Baas Jack’.

After 4 weeks with the record to date 13 UK/US chart toppers in the charts we dropped to 12 with ‘Glory Of Love’ and ‘Stuck With You’ dropping out of the charts and ‘I Knew You Were Waiting’ being the only new entry that had got to number 1 on those charts. We also dropped from the record to date 12 UK/US chart toppers in the top 20 to 10.

This week was the 4^th most turbulent we had seen to date. This is based on adding the number of places songs climbed to the number of places they fell. This total was 106 which was 1 less than the 3^rd highest we had seen but a little way off the record to date of 144.

Youtube playlist:

8 February 1987

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	10	Walk Like an Egyptian	–	Bangles
2	7	8	Everybody Have Fun Tonight	–	Wang Chung
3	2	19	The Lady in Red	–	Chris de Burgh
4	5	10	True Blue	–	Madonna
5	3	15	Don’t Leave Me This Way	–	Communards
6	9	9	A Matter of Trust	–	Billy Joel
7	6	14	Oh L’Amour	–	Erasure
8	4	15	I Want to Wake Up with You	–	Boris Gardiner
9	11	14	To be a Lover	–	Billy Idol
10	13	10	Two of Hearts	–	Stacey Q
11	8	18	You Can Call Me Al	–	Paul Simon
12	19	4	The Final Countdown	–	Europe
13	10	13	Human	–	Human League
14	12	12	Atlantis is Calling	–	Modern Talking
15	18	8	True Colors	–	Cyndi Lauper
16	16	11	Notorious	–	Duran Duran
17	20	21	Take My Breath Away	–	Berlin
18	27	3	World Shut Your Mouth	–	Julian Cope
19	24	4	I’ll be Over You	–	Toto
20	14	18	Stuck with You	–	Huey Lewis & The News
21	26	4	Don’t Get Me Wrong	–	Pretenders
22	15	24	Venus	–	Bananarama
23	23	5	Brand New Lover	–	Dead or Alive
24	21	16	The Way it Is	–	Bruce Hornsby & The Range
25	New	1	Hi! Hi! Hi!	–	Sandra
26	17	27	Glory of Love	–	Peter Cetera
27	28	3	I’ve Been Losing You	–	A-Ha
28	22	16	I Wanna be a Cowboy	–	Boys Don’t Cry
29	New	1	Geronimo’s Cadillac	–	Modern Talking
30	30	2	Forever Live and Die	–	Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Having regained the top spot last week, The Bangles’ ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ held on to it this time unlike its first run at number 1 which lasted just 1 week. Chris de Burgh’s ‘The Lady In Red’ was dancing at 3 while Wang Chung’s ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’ moved up from 7 to take second spot which the former had just vacated.

Julian Cope picked up the climber of the week award as his ‘World Shut Your Mouth’ moved up 9 from 27 to 18. The other star raters this week were ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’ (mentioned above), Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ (up 7 from 19 to 12), Toto’s ‘I’ll Be Over You’ (up 5 from 24 to 19) and The Pretenders’ ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’ (up 5 from 21 to 26).

‘World Shut Your Mouth’ and ‘I’ll Be Over You’ were the new entries into the top 20 this week and they replaced Bananarama’s ‘Venus’ and Peter Cetera’s ‘Glory Of Love’. The latter was the faller of the week, dropping 9 from 17 to 26.

Looking only at the top 20, then the climber was ‘The Final Countdown’ (mentioned above with star raters) and the faller Huey Lewis & The News’ ‘Stuck With You’ which dropped 6 from 14 to 20. Huey & Co would have been grateful to ‘Glory Of Love’ for having a bigger top 30 fall as they had now clocked up 40 weeks in the charts and had done so without ever having the overall biggest faller in a week. They were only the 11^th act to manage such a run.

‘Glory Of Love’ was still the oldest in the top 30 sitting on 27 weeks, but we now had to look to Berlin’s ‘Take My Breath Away’ for oldest in the top 20. It had spent 18 weeks in that part of the chart.

Kenny Loggins’ ‘Danger Zone’ and Level 42’s ‘Lessons In Love’ were the songs that left the charts this week. ‘Danger Zone’ had been with us for 21 weeks and managed to get to 3 during that time. This would herald the end of the SA chart road for Loggins. He had managed 3 hits, spent 53 weeks in the charts and managed 2 weeks at 1 with ‘Footloose’. In addition to his 3 hits, he also had a song writing credit on The Doobie Brothers’ ‘What A Fool Believes’ which if added to the above would give him 4 hits and 66 weeks.

‘Lessons In Love’ spent 26 weeks in the charts, 4 of which were at number 1. This would be the sum total of Level 42’s time in our charts.

Sandra returned to the charts with her 4^th hit to make our charts, ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’. The song writing team of Michael Cretu, Hubert Kemmler and Klaus Hirschburger were once again used and the song would give Sandra a number 7 hit in her native Germany. It would perform particularly well in Greece where it got to number 2. It had some success elsewhere in Europe going to 12 in Austria, 13 in France, 47 in The Netherlands, 36 in Spain and 20 in Switzerland. Sandra was the 4^th German act to manage 4 hits with Modern Talking, Michael Holm and Alphaville being the other to manage this.

And talking of Modern Talking, they took the overall lead for number of hits by a German act. They had been sitting tied first with Michael Holm on 5 hits, but now moved on to 6 hits with the arrival of their ‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’. ‘Atlantis Is Calling’ was still in the charts and Modern Talking became the 3^rd act to see at least 4 different pairings of hits in the charts. Only Madonna and The Bee Gees had previously managed this and both of them sat on 5 at the moment. ‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’ has the distinction of being the first Modern Talking single not to reach the number 1 spot in Germany. It peaked at 3 where it sat for 2 weeks with Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ and Falco’s ‘Coming Home’ at 1 and 2 for the first week then at 2 and 1 respectively for the second week. ‘Geronimo’s Cadillac’ would also go top 10 in Austria (#3), Belgium (#4), Norway (#7), Spain (#1), Sweden (#6) and Switzerland (#6). Having 2 hits in the charts moved Modern Talking’s weeks count total on to 114 which meant they now entered the top 20 of the total weeks count list. This knocked Diana Ross and local lad, Billy Forrest into tied 21^st place.

With the 2 new entries being by German acts, this was the only time we would see 2 new entries in the same week from the same non-big 3 nation. We had now seen a total of 48 hits by German acts and they extended their lead for hits by a non-big 3 nation, now 8 ahead of second placed Canada.

This week was the 4^th in a row with a record to date 13 UK/US chart toppers in the charts, but we ended the 4 week run of a record 12 of these being in the top 20 as ‘Venus’ and ‘Glory Of Love’ fell out of that part of the chart.

Youtube playlist: