| TW | LW | Weeks | Song | Artist | |
| 1 | 2 | 7 | Going Back to My Roots | – | Odyssey |
| 2 | 4 | 5 | It’s You, It’s You, It’s You | – | Joe Dolan |
| 3 | 1 | 10 | Endless Love | – | Diana Ross & Lionel Richie |
| 4 | 3 | 7 | It’s My Party | – | Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin |
| 5 | 5 | 14 | Urgent | – | Foreigner |
| 6 | 7 | 5 | Prince Charming | – | Adam & The Ants |
| 7 | 6 | 7 | Dancing on the Floor (Hooked On Love) | – | Third World |
| 8 | 10 | 4 | Under Pressure | – | Queen & David Bowie |
| 9 | 12 | 6 | Arthur’s Theme (Best That You can Do) | – | Christopher Cross |
| 10 | 8 | 9 | Start Me Up | – | Rolling Stones |
| 11 | 9 | 12 | Wired for Sound | – | Cliff Richard |
| 12 | 11 | 15 | Queen of Hearts | – | Juice Newton |
| 13 | 18 | 2 | Tainted Love | – | Soft Cell |
| 14 | 14 | 2 | Die Royal Hotel | – | David Kramer |
| 15 | 15 | 3 | Young Turks | – | Rod Stewart |
| 16 | 13 | 10 | Green Door | – | Shakin’ Stevens |
| 17 | 16 | 12 | Hold on Tight | – | Electric Light Orchestra |
| 18 | New | 1 | Action Man | – | Village People |
| 19 | New | 1 | Abacab | – | Genesis |
| 20 | 19 | 10 | Hooked on Classics | – | Royal Philharmonic Orchestra |
Bubbling under (thanks to Kevin Farquhason for the info):
| Dale Stephens | We’ve Got The Love (official bubble) |
| Toyah | I Want To Be Free |
| Hotline | You’re So Good To Me |
The final chart of 1981 threw up a new number 1 hit in the form of Odyssey’s ‘Going Back To My Roots’ which took over the number 1 slot from Diana Ross & Lionel Richie’s ‘Endless Love’. The latter had been at 1 for 4 weeks and it dropped to 3 with Joe Dolan’s ‘It’s You, It’s You, It’s You’ climbing 2 from 4 to 2 to be an immediate challenger to the new number 1.
Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love’ took the climber of the week award as it jumped 5 from 18 to 13. It would be the only star rater this week. Moving in the opposite direction at pace was Shakin’ Stevens’ ‘Green Door’ which fell 3 from 13 to 16 to take the faller of the week award.
For a 5th week running we saw Juice Newton’s ‘Queen Of Heart’ being the oldest on the charts. It was sitting on 15 weeks overall.
Apart from losing a duet from the number 1 spot, we also lost a duet from the top 20 as Rex Smith & Rachel Sweet’s cover of ‘Everlasting Love’ dropped out of the charts after spending 7 weeks in the top 20 and peaking at 11. This would be the only SA chart hit for both Rex and Rachel. ‘Everlasting Love’ had also charted for Love Affair back in 1968 and between the 2 versions the song had clocked up a total of 13 weeks. It sat tied 38th for weeks by a song charting in more than 1 version sharing the spot with ‘I’ll Step Aside’ which had charted for Tony Wells and Ronnie Wilson and ‘Green Tambourine’ which had been hits for Sun Dragon and The Lemon Pipers.
We also bid farewell to Alvin Stardust’s ‘Pretend’ which had managed a run of 4 weeks and a peak of 15. As with the ‘Everlasting Love’ couple, we would only see 1 hit from Alvin.
We had seen the Village People spend time in the charts in 1978, 1979 and 1980 and they left it till the very last week to continue the run into 1981. They were quite sneaky at doing this as the song they charted with in 1978, ‘Y.M.C.A.’ entered the charts in 1 December 1978 and lasted into 1979. They didn’t chart again till the August of 1980 when ‘Can’t Stop The Music’ made the charts. Then again it was nothing until this week when ‘Action Man’ entered the top 20 at 18. This was taken from their album ‘Renaissance’ which, although still produced by Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo (who had produced all their previous disco hits), moved the band in a new romantic direction. The first single off the album, ‘Do You Wanna Spend The Night’ had made it to number 2 on the Radio 5 charts, but it failed to make the Springbok ones while ‘Action Man’ failed to chart on the Radio 5 ones. Their new look and sound failed to make a major impact with album peaking at 138 on the US Billboard album charts while none of the singles from the albums made the singles charts there.
Earlier in the year we saw Phil Collins make his SA chart debut with ‘In The Air Tonight’, but it was a busy year for Mr Collins as he now saw his band, Genesis, make their SA chart debut with ‘Abacab’.
The song title came from a lettering system the band used for various sections of the song although the final version did not follow this format. ‘Abacab’ would go to 9 in the UK and would also get to 35 in Australia, 36 in Belgium, 11 in Canada, 26 in the US, 8 in Norway and 28 in Germany. It would top the Radio 5 charts.
This was only the 3rd time we had seen 2 new entries where the song titles began with the letter ‘A’. The previous time had been 758 weeks previous on 23 June 1967 when 2 versions of ‘A Groovy Kind Of Love’ entered the charts. These were by The Mindbenders and Petula Clark. Prior to that had been on 1 April 1966 when we saw Herman’s Hermits’ ‘A Must To Avoid’ and The Kinks ‘A Well Respected Man’ were new entries. You may have noticed that our 2 hits this week were both words starting with ‘A’ (if you can call ‘Abacab’ a word) rather than the 4 mention above where the song titles all started with an ‘A’ on its own which sometimes is ignored when sorting things alphabetically.
We saw groups move back up to accounting for 10 of the top 20 hits this week. It had been 30 weeks since it was last this high for them.
Both Joe Dolan and Queen reached weeks milestones with Dolan hitting 110 and Queen moving on to 60. Dolan sat 13th overall while Queen were 52nd. The Rolling Stones moved 1 week ahead of Elvis Presley as they ticked over to 131 making 8th place on the overall list their own with Presley slipping to 9th.
Diana Ross and Queen both moved past the 700 points mark with the former moving on to 713 and the latter on to 709. They sat 44th and 45th respectively overall.
The average number of weeks the top 20 songs had been with us crept over 7 to 7.1. This was the first time it had gone over 7 for 28 weeks. Looking at the weekly averages and averaging those, 1981 had the lowest figure we had seen since 1970. Back then the week average of the average was 5.902. In 1981 it was 6.21 which was the 7th lowest annual average we had seen so far.
1981 became the 4th year where none of the acts that appeared on the first chart of the year would also appear on the last one. The previous years where this had happened were 1971, 1972 and 1978. Although there were no acts from the first week of the year on the chart this week, we did see a 3rd year running where we began and ended the year with a US act at number 1 as Barbra Streisand’s ‘Woman In Love’ had been the top hit at the beginning of 1981.
Well that finishes off another year and we creep ever closer to the February of 1989 when the last ever chart was broadcast, but there is still plenty more to come. To those who like statistics, we were now 69.85% of our way through the charts. But before we hurtle on into 1982, the next entry will be the usual summary of the shakers and movers of the year.
Youtube playlist:
SA Singles Charts 