26 September 1980

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	13	Paradise Road	–	Joy
2	3	6	Can’t Stop the Music	–	Village People
3	2	12	More Than I Can Say	–	Leo Sayer
4	6	3	Emotional Rescue	–	Rolling Stones
5	7	4	Funkytown	–	Lipps Inc.
6	9	3	D.I.S.C.O.	–	Ottawan
7	4	12	Down the Mississippi	–	Barbara Ray
8	8	7	Space Invaders	–	Player (1)
9	5	13	Call Me	–	Blondie
10	11	2	The Winner Takes it All	–	ABBA
11	10	11	I See a Boat on the River	–	Boney M
12	18	2	Upside Down	–	Diana Ross
13	New	1	Magic	–	Olivia Newton-John
14	20	2	Little Jeannie	–	Elton John
15	14	5	I’m Alive	–	Electric Light Orchestra
16	15	6	Aloha-oe, Until We Meet Again	–	Goombay Dance Band
17	19	3	(You’ll Always Find Me in the) Kitchen at Parties	–	Jona Lewie
18	16	5	You May be Right	–	Billy Joel
19	New	1	Fame	–	Irene Cara
20	17	9	New York by Night	–	Dennis Parker

Joy’s ‘Paradise Road’ was now 1 of only 6 songs that had spent at least 9 weeks at 1 as it held on to the top spot for another week. 3 of the 6 were songs by local acts with Richard Jon Smith’s ‘Michael Row The Boat Ashore’ also having managed 9 and Charisma’s ‘Mammy Blue’ being the best for a local song, managing 12. Joy joined Richard Jon Smith and The Hollies in tied 16^th place on the weeks at 1 list.

Diana Ross’ ‘Upside Down’ and Elton John’s ‘Little Jeanie’ shared the climber of the week award with both songs moving up 6 to land at 12 and 14 respectively. It was a 4^th biggest climber award for Diana Ross and a 5^th for Elton John. 46 acts so far had seen 5 or more biggest climber awards. These 2 were the only star raters this week.

Blondie picked up their 3^rd biggest faller of the week award as ‘Call Me’ scooped up the honours with a 4 place drop from 5 to 9. It did, however, share the oldest on the chart title with Joy’s ‘Paradise Road’. Both songs were on 13 weeks and enjoying their 2^nd week as the oldest.

The Nolans saw their SA chart career come to an end as ‘Don’t Make Waves’ left the top 20 this week. It had been with us for 9 weeks and peaked at 5. They had seen 2 hits charts with the other being ‘I’m In The Mood For Dancing’ which topped the charts for 1 week and spent a total of 13 weeks in the charts giving The Nolans a total weeks count of 22. This was the 3^rd highest weeks count to date for an Irish act, but they would have dropped to 6^th on that list by the time the charts ended in 1989.

Also going was Styx’s ‘Boat On The River’ which managed a run of 10 weeks and peaked at 7. This was the worst performance of their 3 hits so far with ‘Lady’ and ‘Babe’, their previous 2 hits peaking at 3 and 1 respectively. They still had 1 more hit to come.

We saw the second song from the film ‘Xanadu’ make our chart as Olivia Newton-John’s ‘Magic’ followed ELO’s ‘I’m Alive’ into the top 20. This was Olivia’s 8^th top 20 hit in SA and she became the 30^th act overall and the 3^rd woman to get to this total. She moved ahead of Nancy Sinatra, who was on 7, and was now 3 behind Barbara Ray and Petula Clark who were both on 11 above her. ‘Magic’ was a second hit for song writer John Farrar who had also brought us Olivia’s duet with John Travolta, ‘You’re The One That I Want’. ‘Magic’ featured Toto’s David Hungate on bass guitar and would spend 4 weeks at the top of the US charts and would also top the charts in Canada. It would not fare as well in the UK where it only made it to 32. In Australia it would get to number 4 and then in 2011 a remix by DJ Dan Murphy and Steve Peach would make it to number 10 in Aus.

The other new entry this week was also from a film. Irene Cara’s ‘Fame’ was the main theme to the Alan Parker film of the same name. Cara herself starred as Coco Hernandez in the film. ‘Fame;’ would peak at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. The film was followed up with a Television series which used the same Irene Cara hit as its theme and it was this TV series that propelled the song into the charts in Europe in 1982/3 where it topped the charts in the UK (3 weeks), Belgium, Ireland and The Netherlands as well as topping the charts in New Zealand. The song has shifted over 1 million units in the UK. ‘Fame’ also had the honour of clocking up the 5,500^th week in the charts for American acts. They were 520 ahead of acts from the UK who were the second highest with 4,981.

ELO became the 98^th act to reach 40 weeks in the charts while Abba continued to increase their lead at the top of the weeks count list as they moved on to 210 and were 7 ahead of The Bee Gees who were in second place. Barbara Ray moved 1 ahead of Creedence Clearwater Revival, her 119 giving her 8^th place overall to herself. She led the way for local acts. Olivia Newton-John re-entered the top 20 of the weeks count list. She had been absent for the top 20 of this list for 53 weeks. Her 84 put her tied 20^th with Alan Garrity and Engelbert Humperdinck.

On the points front we saw Barbara Ray move past the 1,300 mark and The Rolling Stones eased their way past 1,400. The Stones sat 7^th overall while Barbara Ray was 12^th and led the way for women.

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