3 May 1987

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	2	12	Sometimes	–	Erasure
2	1	9	Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)	–	Paul Lekakis
3	3	10	All I Ask of You	–	Cliff Richard & Sarah Brightman
4	6	16	The Final Countdown	–	Europe
5	7	13	Hi! Hi! Hi!	–	Sandra
6	14	4	Everything I Own	–	Boy George
7	4	9	Is This Love?	–	Alison Moyet
8	5	11	(I Just) Died in Your Arms	–	Cutting Crew
9	8	13	Geronimo’s Cadillac	–	Modern Talking
10	17	12	I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)	–	George Michael & Aretha Franklin
11	15	7	Caravan of Love	–	Lovemasters
12	13	14	Forever Live and Die	–	Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
13	11	22	Two of Hearts	–	Stacey Q
14	23	4	C’est La Vie	–	Robbie Nevil
15	9	20	Everybody Have Fun Tonight	–	Wang Chung
16	16	21	A Matter of Trust	–	Billy Joel
17	20	5	The Great Pretender	–	Freddie Mercury
18	19	6	Cry Wolf	–	A-Ha
19	22	5	Hymn to Her	–	Pretenders
20	18	11	You Give Love a Bad Name	–	Bon Jovi
21	10	9	French Kissing in the U.S.A.	–	Debbie Harry
22	12	8	Shake You Down	–	Gregory Abbott
23	24	3	Livin’ on a Prayer	–	Bon Jovi
24	21	9	Montego Bay	–	Amazulu
25	25	3	Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)	–	Glass Tiger
26	27	4	Thorn in My Side	–	Eurythmics
27	New	1	I Come Undone	–	Jennifer Rush
28	28	2	Lady Soul	–	Temptations
29	26	16	I’ll be Over You	–	Toto
30	New	1	Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now	–	Starship

Despite the odds being stacked against it, Erasure’s ‘Sometimes’ made it to number 1. It had sat at number 2 for a record breaking 6 weeks before hitting the top spot (some songs had seen longer runs at 2 but had either not made it to 1 or seen the run after dropping from the top spot). ’Sometimes’ replaced Paul Lekakis’ ‘Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back To My Room)’ after the latter had been the nation’s favourite for 3 weeks. ‘Sometimes’ was the 114^th song by a British act to top the charts and the British were now 3 behind the Americans who had managed 117. The Americans had spent 33 more weeks at 1 than the Brits.

Robbie Nevil’s ‘C’est La Vie’ took the climber of the week award with a 9 place jump from 23 to 14 and, along with The Pretenders’ ‘Hymn To Her’, was a new entry into the top 20. Boy George’s ‘Everything I Own’ had been the climber in the charts for the last 2 weeks. It had been the climber in the top 20 for the second of those 2 weeks, and now it was the climber in the top 20 for 2^nd week running as it took the award for that part of the chart with an 8 place jump from 14 to 6. Apart from the 2 biggest climbers, there were 2 other star raters and these were Aretha Franklin and George Michael’s ‘I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)’ and local act The Lovemasters’ ‘Caravan Of Love’ which moved up 7 and 4 places to land at 10 and 11 respectively.

The faller of the week was Debbie Harry’s ‘French Kissing In The U.S.A.’ which dropped 11 from 10 to 21. It was joined in leaving the top 20 by Gregory Abbott’s ‘Shake you Down’. ‘French Kissing In The U.S.A.’ was the 12^th song to fall 11 or more places in a week and set the all-time record highest final position for a song leaving the top 20 during the top 30 era.

Within the top 20 it was Wang Chung’s ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’ which fell 6 from 9 to 15. It was still the oldest in the top 20, sharing the title with Stacey Q’s ‘Two Of Hearts’. Both songs had been in the top 20 for 18 weeks and this was their 3^rd week as the oldest.

It was a good news/bad news week for Erasure as they had the good news of reaching number 1 but they also had the bad news that ‘Oh L’Amour’ was falling off the charts. They were the 3^rd act to take the top spot in the same week one of their songs left the charts. The previous acts to manage this were The Bee Gees who went to number 1 with ‘I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You’ the same week ‘To Love Somebody’ left the charts and Pussycat who took the top spot with ‘Smile’ the week ‘Mississippi’ left the charts. ‘Oh L’Amour’ spent 25 weeks in the charts and peaked at 2.

We also bid farewell to The Bangles’ ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ which managed 21 weeks and spent 4 of those at 1. Their only other hit to date, ‘Manic Monday’ had spent 5 weeks more in the charts, but only managed 2 weeks at 1. The Bangles would return to the charts at a later date.

Jennifer Rush’s first run in the charts lasted a record 54 consecutive weeks with 3 hits overlapping to get her to that total. After that initial flurry, there had been nothing for almost as long as that first run as it was now 52 weeks since she was last last in the charts, but she returned this week with ‘I Come Undone’, our first new entry. The song was taken from her third album, ‘Heart Over Mind’ and was a cover of a song recorded in 1983 by an American singer called Ellen Shipley. Shipley co-wrote the song with Morrie Brown, a songwriter/producer who had worked with Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King and BT Express. ‘I Come Undone’ would be a minor hit in Europe for Rush, going to 28 in Austria, 11 in Germany, 9 in Switzerland and 94 in the UK.

The second new entry was Starship’s ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’. It was their 3^rd SA chart hit and would give songwriters Diane Warren and Albert Hammond their 2^nd and 12^th hits on our charts respectively. Warren had co-written DeBarge’s ‘Rhythm Of The Night’ while Hammond had seen 4 hits make the charts as an artist. ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’ was used in the film ‘Mannequin’ which starred Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall (of ‘Sex And The City ‘ fame) and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Song , losing out to ‘(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life’ from ‘Dirty Dancing. ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’ would top the charts in the UK, the US, Canada, Ireland, Portugal and Zimbabwe as well as  having a clean sweep of number 1’s on the Radio 5, Capital 604 and Radio 702 charts.

After 5 weeks in a row seeing an equal number of hits by UK and US acts, we finally saw the deadlock broken as we now had 13 US hits and only 11 UK hits. This meant that the record run for the 2 nations being equal was not broken and still sat at 5.

Canadian acts celebrated reaching the 400 weeks milestone with Glass Tiger’s ‘Don’t’ Forget Me When I’m Gone’ having the honour of getting their nation to that milestone. Canada sat 3^rd of the non-big 3 nations but were only 4 behind The Netherlands who were second. They had a lot of catching up to do to Germany who led the way with 619 weeks.

Toto reached 50 weeks in the charts and were the 117^th act to reach their half century. On the top 30 points front, Billy Joel saw his total move on to 2,000 and he was the 25^th act to reach this milestone.

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