| Pos | LW | Weeks | Song | Artist | |
| 1 | 1 | 4 | Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) | – | Pink Floyd |
| 2 | 2 | 14 | Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough | – | Michael Jackson |
| 3 | 3 | 12 | The Part of Me That Needs You Most | – | Exile |
| 4 | 4 | 10 | Rise | – | Herb Alpert |
| 5 | 9 | 4 | Babe | – | Styx |
| 6 | 6 | 5 | Video Killed the Radio Star | – | Buggles |
| 7 | 7 | 6 | Great Balls of Fire | – | Nightmare |
| 8 | 15 | 2 | Do That to Me One More Time | – | Captain & Tennille |
| 9 | 13 | 3 | Tired of Toein’ the Line | – | Rocky Burnette |
| 10 | 5 | 12 | Crazy Little Thing Called Love | – | Queen |
| 11 | 14 | 3 | Escape (The Pina Colada Song) | – | Rupert Holmes |
| 12 | 10 | 11 | If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body (Would You Hold it Against Me) | – | Bellamy Brothers |
| 13 | 8 | 17 | She’s in Love with You | – | Suzi Quatro |
| 14 | 11 | 5 | Ain’t Gonna Stop (Till I Get to the Top) | – | Joy |
| 15 | 12 | 10 | Caravan Song | – | Barbara Dickson |
| 16 | New | 1 | Please Don’t Go | – | KC & The Sunshine Band |
| 17 | 16 | 4 | Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (a Man After Midnight) | – | ABBA |
| 18 | New | 1 | Rapper’s Delight | – | Sugarhill Gang |
| 19 | 18 | 7 | Friday on My Mind | – | Chilly |
| 20 | New | 1 | Ballad of Lucy Jordan | – | Marianne Faithfull |
‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)’ by Pink Floyd spent a second week at 1 while the previous chart topper, Michael Jackson’s ‘Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough’ was unmoved at 2 were it had dropped to last week.
Captain & Tennille’s ‘Do That to Me One More Time’ was the climber of the week as it moved up 7 from 15 to 8. It was their 3rd time with the award having picked it up with both of their previous hits. There were 2 other star raters and they were Styx’s ‘Babe’ which moved up 4 from 9 to 5 while Rocky Burnette’s ‘Tired Of Toeing The Line’ climbed 4 from 13 to 9. It was both Captain & Tennille and Styx’s 5th time with a star rater and they were the 97th and 98th acts to see this many.
Queen’s ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ and Suzi Quatro’s ‘She’s In Love With You’ were the fallers of the week, both songs dropping 5 and landing at 10 and 13 respectively. For both acts it was the 3rd time with the award. ‘She’s In Love With You’ was enjoying its 3rd week as the oldest in the charts and its 17th week overall in the top 20.
Crystal Gayle’s SA chart career came to an end as her ‘Half The Way’ left the top 20 this week. It had seen a run of 12 weeks and peaked at 4. She had seen 2 songs chart, the other being ‘Hello I Love You’. In total she managed 28 weeks in the charts and saw both songs peak at 4.
Mike Batt’s ‘Run Like The Wind’ only lasted 2 weeks in the charts, spending both those weeks at number 19. This would be his only SA chart hit as an artist but we would see his name in the writing credits of 1 more hit. He had already seen 3 hits as a song writer.
Last of the leavers was Alan Price’s ‘This is Your Lucky Day (The Girl Won’t Get Under)’ which managed a run of 8 weeks and peaked at 12. This ended his SA chart career. He had seen 1 other hit as The Alan Price Set and one as part of a duo with Georgie Fame which went under the name Fame and Price Together. His total weeks count was 16 and ‘This is Your Lucky Day (The Girl Won’t Get Under)’ and ‘Rosetta’, which was the Fame And Price Together hit, both peaked at 12, the highest placing he managed.
KC & The Sunshine Band saw their 3rd hit and first of the new decade make our charts in the form of ‘Please Don’t Go’. It had been 172 weeks since they were last on the charts and this was the 128th time an act had seen a gap of 100 weeks or more between hits. ‘Please Don’t Go’ would be the first number 1 hit of the 80s in the US but it would only last just that 1 week at the top of the charts before being dethroned by Michael Jackson’s ‘Rock With You’. It would also get to number 1 in Australia and Canada. In the UK it would peak at 3. A number of covers have been recorded with Double You’s 1992 version topping the charts in Belgium, The Netherlands and Spain while KWS’s version made it to the top of the UK charts in the same year. In 2008 the Basshunters released a version which made 72 in Slovakia and 6 in Sweden.
The second new entry was one of the first rap songs to gain commercial success. Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ sampled Chic’s ‘Good Times’ and put a rap over it. The result being that Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were eventually given songwriting credits on the track which made it to 36 in the US. It would make it to 3 in the UK and top the charts in Canada and The Netherlands. It would also make it to number 2 in Belgium, France, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. In 2009 Dan The Automator remixed the track and it was used as the music for an Evian advert which featured babies roller-skating which would become an internet sensation.
The final new entry set a new record for gaps between hits. Marianne Faithfull had last been seen on our charts 752 weeks previously (on 17 September 1965) with her hit ‘This Little Bird’. This week she returned with her 2nd SA chart hit, ‘Ballad Of Lucy Jordan’. The song was written by Shel Silverstein and was his 3rd song as a song writer to chart. He had written Johnny Cash’s ‘A Boy Named Sue’ and Dr Hook’s ‘Sylvia’s Mother’ and it was Dr Hook who first recorded ‘Ballad Of Lucy Jordon’ in 1974 with the slightly different spelling as noted. However, Dr Hook’s version was just an album track so didn’t feature on any charts. Marianne Faithfull’s version would go to 48 in the UK. In Europe it fared a lot better getting to 2 in Austria, 5 in Switzerland and Germany, 7 in Belgium, 17 in France and 19 in The Netherlands. It would also make 18 in Australia, 20 in New Zealand and 11 in Zimbabwe.
For a 3rd week running we saw an act reach 20 weeks in the charts and this time round it was Styx that managed it. We had seen Chilly get there the previous week and Herb Alpert the week before.
The arrival of ‘Please Don’t Go’ onto the charts meant that we now had 9 songs in the top 20 that had topped the UK, the US or both charts. This equalled the record to date. The songs that had topped either or both of those charts were ‘Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)’ (both), ‘Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough’ (US), ‘Rise’ (US), ‘Babe’ (US), ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ (UK), ‘Do That to Me One More Time’ (US), ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ (US), ‘Escape (The Pina Colada Song)’ (US) and ‘Please Don’t Go’ (US).
Youtube playlist:
SA Singles Charts 