18 December 1981

TW	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	9	Endless Love	–	Diana Ross & Lionel Richie
2	3	6	Going Back to My Roots	–	Odyssey
3	4	6	It’s My Party	–	Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin
4	5	4	It’s You, It’s You, It’s You	–	Joe Dolan
5	2	13	Urgent	–	Foreigner
6	10	6	Dancing on the Floor (Hooked On Love)	–	Third World
7	11	4	Prince Charming	–	Adam & The Ants
8	6	8	Start Me Up	–	Rolling Stones
9	8	11	Wired for Sound	–	Cliff Richard
10	16	3	Under Pressure	–	Queen & David Bowie
11	9	14	Queen of Hearts	–	Juice Newton
12	14	5	Arthur’s Theme (Best That You can Do)	–	Christopher Cross
13	7	9	Green Door	–	Shakin’ Stevens
14	New	1	Die Royal Hotel	–	David Kramer
15	20	2	Young Turks	–	Rod Stewart
16	12	11	Hold on Tight	–	Electric Light Orchestra
17	18	4	Pretend	–	Alvin Stardust
18	New	1	Tainted Love	–	Soft Cell
19	15	9	Hooked on Classics	–	Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
20	13	7	Everlasting Love	–	Rex Smith & Rachel Sweet

Bubbling under (thanks to Kevin Farquhason for the info):

Village People	Action Man (official bubble)
Genesis	Abacab
Dale Stephens	We’ve Got The Love
The Frank Barber Orchestra	Glen Miller Today
Stevie Wonder	Happy Birthday
Police	Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Billy Joel	Say Goodbye To Hollywood

It was now 4 weeks at 1 for Diana Ross & Lionel Richie’s ‘Endless Love’ which had a new number 2 to contend with this week. For the past 3 weeks, Foreigner’s ‘Urgent’ had been sitting at 2 ever since relinquishing the top spot to ‘Endless Love’ but this week we saw Odyssey’s ‘Going Back To My Roots’ move up from 3 to 2 to put pressure on the top hit.

And talking of pressure, Queen & David Bowie’s ‘Under Pressure’ took the climber of the week award as it moved up 6 from 16 to 10. It was a 4^th such award for Queen and Bowie’s 2^nd having picked up 1 previously with his hit ‘Sorrow’. There were 3 other star raters in the form of Third World’s ‘Dancing On The Floor (Hooked On Love)’ which moved up 4 from 10 to 6, Adam & The Ants’ ‘Prince Charming;’ which climbed 4 from 11 to 7 and Rod Stewart’s ‘Young Turks’ which jumped 5 from 20 to 15.

And since the number 1 hit and the climber of the week were both by duets, we thought we may as well make it a clean sweep and the faller of the weeks was Rex Smith & Rachel Sweet’s ‘Everlasting Love’ which dropped 7 from 13 to 20.

Juice Newton’s ‘Queen Of Hearts’ moved on to 14 weeks in the charts and enjoyed it’s 4^th week as the oldest in the top 20.

Aneka’s ‘Japanese Boy’ became the 65^th song to have a total chart run of just 1 week as it dropped off the top 20 after entering it last week at number 19. Of these 65 ‘1 weekers’, 39 had spent that week at 20, 19 had managed to get to 19, 4 made it to 18 while there had been 1 which spent that week at 17 and 1 that spent it at 16, although it should be noted that the song that spent its week at 16 was The Seekers’ ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’ which sat at 16 on the very first chart. Aneka would only have the 1 hit and was the 23^rd act so far to only see 1 hit and only spend 1 week on the charts.

We also bid farewell to the Mattison Brothers’ ‘Love Hurts’ which managed a run of 7 weeks and peaked at 13. This would be their only SA chart hit.

With ‘Love Hurts’ departing the top 20, we would have seen another chart with no South African act on it had it not been for David Kramer coming to the rescue with is second SA chart hit, ‘Die Royal Hotel’ which entered at 14 this week. The song was the second hit off his ‘Die Verhaal Van Blokkies Joubert’ mini album. This was the 33^rd Afrikaans song to make our charts and the 28^th one to be a purely Afrikaans song, Kramer’s previous hit being a mixture of English and Afrikaans lyrics.

The second new entry was a cover of a song from 1964. ‘Tainted Love’ was originally recorded by Gloria Jones back then and it was released as the b-side of her single ‘My Bad Boy’s Comin’ Home’, but neither track found any success. Then in 1973 a British club DJ picked up a copy of the single and began playing the b-side in the clubs. Jones re-recorded it in 1976, but still no success. However Soft Cell’s Marc Almond heard the track and eventually in 1981 Soft Cell revived the song and their version shot to the top of the UK charts, spending 2 weeks at 1 there. It also topped the charts in Australia, Belgium, Canada and Germany. In the US it was more of a slow burner hit, eventually finding its way up to a peak of 8, but managed a record at the time 43 weeks in the hot 100. There have been a couple of re-mixes of the song which have also made the UK charts and at the time of writing Soft Cell’s various versions have spent a total of 44 weeks in the UK charts.

The Rolling Stones moved level with Elvis Presley on the weeks count list with both acts on 131 and sharing 7^th place. A bit further down the list Joe Dolan moved 1 ahead of Boney M. His 109 weeks meant he took 13^th place on his own while Boney M dropped into 14^th place.

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