24 October 1975

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	7	S.O.S.	–	ABBA
2	4	4	Barbados	–	Typically Tropical
3	5	7	You Lay so Easy on My Mind	–	Andy Williams
4	3	8	I Don’t Love You, But I Think I Like You	–	Gilbert O’ Sullivan
5	7	5	Rhinestone Cowboy	–	Glen Campbell
6	2	11	Paloma Blanca	–	George Baker Selection
7	6	8	Misty	–	Ray Stevens
8	9	6	I’m Not Lisa	–	Jessi Colter
9	12	5	Get it Up for Love	–	David Cassidy
10	13	5	My Klein Witte Duifie	–	Tamaletjie
11	16	6	Brazil	–	Ritchie Family
12	8	13	Love will Keep Us Together	–	Captain & Tennille
13	11	13	The Look in Your Eyes	–	Johnny Nash
14	10	13	Please Stay	–	Jonathan Butler
15	19	3	Autobahn	–	Kraftwerk
16	New	1	(I Believe) There’s Nothing Stronger Than Our Love	–	Paul Anka & Odia Coates
17	20	2	Walk on By	–	Gloria Gaynor
18	New	1	Three Steps to Heaven	–	Showaddywaddy
19	New	1	Wasted Days and Wasted Nights	–	Gene Rockwell
20	New	1	I Dreamed Last Night	–	Justin Hayward & John Lodge

Abba’s ‘S.O.S.’ spent a 4^th week at number 1 and moved into tied 13^th spot with Kris Kristofferson and Tommy Roe for total weeks at 1 as their overall total moved on to 8. This also meant that Sweden moved 1 ahead of Germany for weeks at 1 by acts from those nations with Abba accounting for all 8 of Sweden’s chart topping weeks. Sweden was now the 3^rd highest nation excluding the UK, the US and SA. The Netherlands on 17 and Canada on 14 were the 2 above them.

Typically Tropical’s ‘Barbados’ moved up a further 2 places to take second spot while Andy Williams, who had already scored a number1 hit with ‘Solitaire’, also moved up 2 to put real pressure on the current number 1.

The Ritchie Family’s ‘Brazil’ became the 8^th song to be the biggest climber after re-entering the charts. It moved up 5 from 16 to 11. The other star rater this week was Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’ which climbed 4 from 19 to 15.

There were 3 songs that shared the faller of the week award this week. The first of these was Jonathan Butler’s ‘Please Stay’ which dropped 3 from 11 to 14. Captain & Tennille’s ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’ also dropped 3 from 9 to 12 and The George Baker Selection’s ‘Paloma Blanca’ fell from 3 to 6. It was a first time with the faller for Jonathan Butler and Captain & Tennille and a 3^rd time for The George Baker Selection. The Jonathan Butler and Captain & Tennille hits were the oldest on the charts for a second week along with Johnny Nash’s ‘The Look In Your Eyes’. They were all on 13 weeks.

This week saw the 8^th time when we would lose 3 local songs from the charts and they were Don Stanton’s ‘Don’t Play It No More’, Jody Wayne’s ‘A Picture Of Patches’ and Geoff St. John’s ‘Kiss Me, Kiss Your Baby’. Stanton’s hit had lasted 4 weeks in the charts and peaked at 17. This would be his only SA chart hit.

‘A Picture Of Patches’ by Jody Wayne lasted 11 weeks in the top 20 and peaked at 6. This would be his last showing on the charts as an artist, but we would see his name on 1 more hit but that would be as producer. Of his 10 hits, ‘A Picture Of Patches’ would be his 4^th to spend 10 or more weeks in the charts and his 5^th to go top 10. He had clocked up a total of 72 weeks and at this point sat 6^th on the local list and 27^th overall for weeks on the charts. By the time the charts ended in 1989 he would have fallen to 10^th on the local list and tied 69^th overall. He saw 1 song top the charts and that was ‘The Wedding’ which spent a total of 3 weeks at 1 in a broken run of 2 weeks and then a further week after dropping off the top spot for 2 weeks.

Geoff St. John’s ‘Kiss Me, Kiss Your Baby’ managed 8 weeks with us and peaked at 10. This was his first of 2 hits that he would have.

Aside from the 3 local hits going, we also said goodbye to Van McCoy & Soul City Symphony’s ‘The Hustle’ which managed 8 weeks and peaked at 5. This would be their only chart hit, but McCoy himself had also seen a further 8 weeks and a peak of 3 as the writer of The Bats’ 1965 hit, ‘A Shabby Little Hut’.

The first of the new entries was a duet by Paul Anka and Odia Coates called ‘(I Believe) There’s Nothing Stronger Than Our Love’. This was Anka’s second excursion into our top 20, but was a first for Odia. The song gave the duo a number 15 hit in the US. Anka took over the lead for the highest average number of characters in song titles for artists having 2 or more hits as his previous hit ‘Goodnight My Love, Pleasant Dreams’ combined with this new entry to give him an average of 34.5 characters per song (punctuation and spaces excluded), beating Barry White’s 29.5 (with ‘Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Babe’ and ‘You’re The First, The Last, My Everything’) into second place. The gap of 335 weeks between this and Anka’s previous hit was the 5^th biggest gap we had seen to date and would be the all time biggest gap for a Canadian act.

Also new to the charts was Showaddywaddy’s cover of the Eddie Cochran song ‘Three Steps To Heaven’. It was the band’s first SA hit, but their 5th to chart in the UK where it went to number 2. Cochran’s 1960 version was the second song to top the UK charts posthumously for an artist (the first was Buddy Holly’s ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’).

Gene Rockwell managed to plug a little of the hole left by the departure of the 3 locals songs mentioned above as his ‘Wasted Days And Wasted Nights’ entered the charts at 19. The song was a cover of one originally recorded by Freddy Fender in 1959. In 1975, Fender re-recorded it and it then went to number 8 in the US and topped the New Zealand charts, spending 12 weeks at the top there in what is the 3rd longest run at the top of the NZ charts to date. Rockwell became the 6^th local act to reach 7 hits and of the other 5 only Four acks & A Jill were not male artists. ‘Wasted Days And Wasted Nights’ helped Rockwell to equal the record to date gap between hits of 411 weeks, his previous hit, ‘Cold Cold Heart’, was last seen on the charts on 8 December 1967. Rockwell shared the record with Cher.

The last of the new entries was Justin Hayward & John Lodge’s hit ‘I Dreamed Last Night’. Sometimes referred to as The Blue Jays, Hayward & Lodge were member of The Moody Blues and recorded this song (which appeared on the album ‘Blue Jays’) while The Moody Blues had a bit of a break. The song gave them a number 47 hit in the US.

After 7 weeks with at least 10 of the top 20 songs being by solo male artists, we saw the men’s figure drop to 8. There were also 8 songs by groups on the charts and 2 apiece for solo female artists and collaborations.

Our nation count on the top 20 edged ever closer to the record to date of 9 as we now had 8 represented in the top 20. These were the UK, the US, SA, Canada, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands and Sweden.

David Cassidy became the 162^nd act to reach 20 weeks in the charts while Andy Williams and Gene Rockwell both celebrated reaching the 40 week mark. There had now been 64 act who had managed to accumulate this many weeks. Johnny Nash was celebrating his half century of weeks as his total hit 50 and he became the 46^th act to manage this.

The George Baker Selection became the 43^rd act to manage 600 or more points. They were the first Dutch act to do this and the 4^th act from a non big 3 nation to do so.

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