2 January 1981

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	11	Woman in Love	–	Barbra Streisand
2	2	12	Man on the Moon	–	Ballyhoo
3	4	11	Another One Bites the Dust	–	Queen
4	3	7	Don’t Stand so Close to Me	–	Police
5	7	10	The Wanderer	–	Donna Summer
6	6	5	Give Me the Night	–	George Benson
7	5	16	Upside Down	–	Diana Ross
8	8	6	Shine On	–	Spirits Rejoice
9	10	4	Love on the Rocks	–	Neil Diamond
10	15	3	Can You Feel It	–	Jacksons
11	9	9	Rock Hard	–	Suzi Quatro
12	11	6	9 to 5 (aka Morning Train)	–	Sheena Easton
13	13	5	Me Myself I	–	Joan Armatrading
14	19	2	(Just Like) Starting Over	–	John Lennon
15	12	8	Shouldn’t Fall in Love	–	City Limits
16	18	3	You Win I Lose	–	Leo Sayer
17	14	9	The Drunken Sailor	–	Babe
18	20	2	There’s A Band Playing On The Radio (Oh Yeah)	–	Roxy Music
19	New	1	The Tide is High	–	Blondie
20	16	16	The Winner Takes it All	–	ABBA

We started the new year as we had ended the old one with Barbra Streisand’s ‘Woman In Love’ at number 1. It was the song’s 6^th week at the top of our charts and it was the 12^th time a song had straddled a year end at the top of the charts meaning that we had only seen 4 year changes that were accompanied by a change in the number 1 song. It was the second time overall and a second year running that a song by a solo female artist had straddled the year end at 1 with Suzi Quatro’s ‘She’s In Love With You’ surviving the change from 1979 to 1980. A further consequence of Barbra’s hit spending another week at 1 was that we saw Barry and Maurice Gibb (who wrote the song along with their brother Robin) move into tied 1^st place for weeks at 1 by a song writer as they caught up with the song writing team of Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn. They had now all seen their compositions spend a total of 36 weeks at 1.

Ballyhoo’s ‘Man On The Moon’ was also unmoved by the change in year as it spent a 6^th straight week at number 2 and had now the longest consecutive week run at 2 by any local song, going ahead of Geli & Billy’s ‘Do You Love Me’.

There were 2 songs which shared the climber of the week award and they were The Jacksons’ ‘Can You feel it’ which moved up 5 from 15 to 10 and John Lennon’s ‘(Just Like) starting Over’ which climbed 5 from 19 to 14. It was Lennon’s 3^rd time with the award and he equalled a solo Paul McCartney for this, although McCartney had seen 4 others as part of Wings. Ringo had seen 4 and George Harrison was on 2. There were no other star raters this week.

Abba equalled the record to date number of fallers of the week as their ‘The Winner Takes It All’ picked up their 17^th award with a 4 place drop from 16 to 20. They caught up with The Bee Gees for number of biggest fallers. ‘The Winner takes It All’ did share the oldest on the chart title with Diana Ross’ ‘Upside Down’. The 2 songs were on 16 weeks and had been the oldest for 3 weeks.

Cliff Richard’s ‘Dreamin’ was the only song on the last chart of 1980 not to make it into 1981. It had seen a run of 7 weeks and a peak of 12. Of his previous 21 hits 12 had seen higher peaks and higher weeks count. This would not be his last hit on our top 20.

The new entry was Blondie’s 5^th hit to make our charts, ‘The Tide Is High’. They became the 74^th act to clock up at least 5 hits. The song was a cover of a song recorded in 1966 by a Jamaican group called The Paragons which feature John Holt (who had charted on our charts in 1975 with a cover of ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’). Holt wrote the song. In 1978 another reggae artist, Gregory Isaacs recorded a version, but it wasn’t until Blondie’s cover came along that the song finally got international recognition. Blondie’s version would top the charts in the UK (2 weeks), the US (1 week), New Zealand (2 weeks) and Canada (4 weeks). Mike Chapman (mentioned above as one of the song writers with the most weeks at 1) produced the track and this was the 20^th time his name had appeared as producer on a song making our charts. He sat tied 4^th with local lad, Grahame Beggs for number of hits as a producer, although it should be noted that producers were not always noted on singles. In 2002 Atomic Kitten took a cover of the track to number 1 in Ireland, New Zealand and the UK.

Abba set a new record for appearing in the charts in consecutive years as this was now the 9^th year in a row that they had managed at least 1 week in the top 20. Leo Sayer was celebrating a run of 5 years while Neil Diamond and Suzi Quatro were both seeing their 4^th consecutive year.

Donna Summer’s ‘The Wanderer’ was her 4^th hit so far and this week it gave her her highest placing in the charts as it reached number 5, going 1 better than ‘I Feel Love’, her previous best performer.

We had just seen 4 consecutive weeks where groups had accounted for 9 of the top 20 songs. This week they were back up to accounting for at least half the charts as their tally moved to 10. We also saw the US acts regain domination of the charts as they had 8 of the top 20 while the Brits dropped to 7. The previous week it had been the other way around with the Brits on 8 and the Americans on 7.

Barbra Streisand saw her weeks count reach the 30 week milestone. She was the 147^th act to manage this and the 23^rd female act to do so.

Neil Diamond moved into tied 6^th place on the overall weeks count list as his 131 weeks put him level with Elvis Presley. It had been 61 weeks since he was last this high on this list.

Blondie became the 79^th act to reach at least 500 points as their total moved on to exactly 500. They sat tied 78^th with Marmalade.

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