THE BANGLES (US)

The Bangles were an all-girl American band from Los Angles and consisted of Susanna Hoffs, Annette Zilinskas, Micki Steele and sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson. Steele had been in the band The Runaways alongside a pre-Blackhearts’ Joan Jett. The 5 of them got together in 1980 and originally called themselves The Colours. They then changed their name to The Bangs and were signed to a record label run by Miles Copeland, the brother of The Police drummer Stewart Copeland. Just as they were about to release their first EP, they discovered there was already a band called The Bangs, so changed their name to The Bangles. One of the tracks on the EP was a cover of a Katrina & The Waves song called ‘Going Down To Liverpool’ and the video for it featured Leonard Nimoy (who played Spock in Star Trek) as the Nimoy family were friends with Susanna Hoffs’ family. They had minor UK hits with their early releases (‘Hero Takes A Fall’ got to 96 and the original version of ‘Going Down To Liverpool’ got to 79) before cracking the big time when their 1985 hit, ‘Manic Monday’, got to number 2 on both sides of the Atlantic. The song was written by Prince, and it was his hit, ‘Kiss’ which was at number 1 in the US the week ‘Manic Monday’ peaked at 2. They would go on to have 8 US hits (including the chart toppers ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ and ‘Eternal Flame’) and 16 UK hits where ‘Eternal Flame’ would be their only chart topper.

Date of entry	Song	Peak (weeks at 1)	Weeks
11-May-1986	Manic Monday	1	26
07-Dec-1986	Walk Like An Egyptian	1	21
05-May-1988	Hazy Shade Of Winter	28	2
		Total hits	3
		Total weeks	49

Biggest climber awards	3
Star rater climbs	6
Biggest fallers	2
Weeks with oldest in the charts	7
Longest run in the charts (weeks)	26
Weeks with more than 1 in the charts	0
Biggest gap between hits (weeks)	53
Top 30 points ranking	122
Top 20 points ranking	99
Top 30 points	1041
Top 20 points	590

The Bangles were 1 of 9 acts to see their first 2 SA chart hits go to number 1.