After some 37 years as a pop music aficionado, and with a decade or so of experience in radio playing the hits in a variety of musical formats:
I still get filled with nostalgic wonder every time I see an old copy of a Billboard Hot 100 chart, from any era you can imagine.
It’s like a peculiar sort of history book, where frozen in amber are the songs from the past, in the context of a museum where you could see historical contemporaries like Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and The Beatles each sharing room for one another within a vacuum.
For the record, the first time that all three shared a Top 40 appearance all at once appears to be January 22, 1966.
The Beatles had Day Tripper and We Can Work It Out in the Top 10 at the same time; Elvis had Tell Me Why, a 1957 recording released as a single by RCA nine years later to make up for a lack of non-movie song product in stores. And the Sinatra classic It Was A Very Good Year was peaking.
This trio would share the Top 40 only a few more times: once more in 1966, again in 1968, and one in 1969, before altogether exiting, stage left.
Nostalgia is a big and wide-ranging marketplace.
In the Internet age, it can be permanent.
Looking over old Top 40 charts and getting a context about the songs that existed alongside one another can be quite a trip.
And indeed, it’s one that was explored many times by Dave Holmes, former MTV, current Esquire editor-at-large, and a guy whose appetite for the Top 40 viewed as a whole from a distance exceeds mine.
For Esquire, and for New York Magazine’s Vulture column, Dave would occasionally take a Billboard Top 40 chart from a specific date, turn it on its ear, and give it his own personal sense of context.
Those columns were, and are, fun to read, because I share that same fascination of pop culture rabbit-holing.
Dave is far too busy to do that anymore.
But as I write this with an ice storm raging outside, I have far too much time on my hands (something my family has said to me, more than once, long before there was an Internet).
So here I go.
Let’s look at the hits from February 11, 1978, at a moment where there was a similar winter weather event raging where I grew up on Long Island, where they got 17 inches of snow on the back end of a very busy snowy season.
At all of 5 years old, I had too much time on my hands then, too.
On with the countdown (where all songs will be rated at the end):
Galaxy
War
Peaked at #39
A futuristic bit of Star Wars-tinged funk.
Which fits, because Star Wars was still in theaters, seven months after its unassuming debut steamrolled pop culture into a Death Star.
This final pop hit for the funk-rock-soul group War was literally funky, rockin’ stuff that’s outta sight. 8
Jack and Jill
Raydio
Peaked at #8
If you can get past the almost kinda icky sexual politics (if a woman doesn’t dote on her man, he’s liable to stray), there’s a catchy R&B-pop hybrid single in there.
Not the famous nursery rhyme, nor the infamous Andrew Dice Clay one, but it uses them to make a point that didn’t seem kinda dubious as it does now.
Fortunately, Ray Parker, Jr. would write an answer to his own song, on A Woman Needs Love (Just Like You Do), in which Jack gets his comeuppance and Jill gets even. 7
Our Love
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #10
A majestic love ballad.
It would be Natalie’s last charting pop single for almost two and a half years.
She was at a personal peak by this time, and the proof was in her two 1978 TV appearances: a Frank Sinatra TV special, and her own special with Johnny Mathis, Stephen Bishop, and Earth, Wind & Fire on CBS that April.
Our Love would fit either place. 8
I Love You
Donna Summer
Peaked at #36
A secret about your writer: I have the kind of mind that for a chunk of these songs. I don’t have to hear them now to recall them quickly.
Most of them live in my mind already, having heard them several times.
Just not this one, arriving immediately after the hypnotic, classic technodisco track I Feel Love.
As generic as the story of a modern-day Cinderella is, though, Donna hits notes they have yet to detect in space and holds them with grace that is missing from modern pop music. 7
Always And Forever
Heatwave
Peaked at #18
As fast as I Love You is, Always And Forever is slow.
And slow-burning, as this is make-out music for the age of Saturday Night Fever, which will come up again.
Is it sung well? That’s a matter of taste, and it’s besides the point, as if it’s good make-out music, and you’re good at the task at hand, you shouldn’t even notice it. Mostly, I never noticed, anyway. 7
Falling
LeBlanc & Carr
Peaked at #13
Where Always and Forever was make-out music, Falling is quite the opposite, handshaking, quick-goodbye music.
It’s soft and squishy easy-listening pop, and it seems better at promoting digestion than promoting romance.
That said, LeBlanc & Carr are very lucky people: they were bumped from the ill-fated flight in 1977 that would kill several members of Lynyrd Skynyrd. 3
The Way You Do The Things You Do
Rita Coolidge
Peaked at #20
Rita, not unlike Linda Ronstadt, is better known for her choice in interpreting other people’s songs than in her own songwriting.
And this era, featuring covers of Boz Scaggs’ We’re All Alone and a version of Jackie Wilson’s (Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher, Rita was filled with interesting choices.
Her take on this Motown classic offers more blues and rock than soul, and she’s always a capable vocalist, but there’s a certain spirit that seems a bit lacking.
Competence over fun isn’t always a blessing. 6
(What A) Wonderful World
Art Garfunkel with James Taylor and Paul Simon
Peaked at #17
Looking back at 1978 from 2023, it’s almost amusingly old-fashioned just how many truly adult performers populated the music charts back then.
A stoic cover of the Sam Cooke classic about hopeful young love could seem, there’s absolutely no place on the Billboard pop landscape for a song like this today.
Even though my taste for lite-rock, shaped by my time spent in radio working those formats, is unchallenged -it, too, is more nourishing than entertaining. 5
Night Fever
Bee Gees
Peaked at #1
This was actually the fourth single to hit the Billboard charts from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. It followed two songs that I’ll get to, and one song that charted briefly in November 1977, but would re-enter the Hot 100 later in 1978: Tavares’s version of More Than a Woman.
Each single played a role in the SNF universe: this one was the key party track that centers the movie, when Travolta’s character starts a line dance at 2001, with the dry ice-er, smoke, bellowing from the dance floor.
It’s every bit as full of life as the opening strut to… a later song, and every bit the match as a #1 track. 10
Street Corner Serenade
Wet Willie
Peaked at #30
Southern rockers Wet Willie, from Mobile, Alabama, and their ode to singing on a street corner like it was 1959.
It didn’t take on the mantle of Dion and the Belmonts very convincingly, especially with a steel drum(?) solo, but the memories weren’t too bad to picture in other contexts.
It’s hard to imagine Mobile as a center for Caucasian doo-wop from a bygone era. 5
Lovely Day
Bill Withers
Peaked at #30
At its peak now, this smooth soft-soul track managed to be used in ads for: the Gap and Allstate, and as as a sample for the soundtrack to The Bodyguard.
And as a footnote in the record books:for the longest note held by a singer with a Top 40 pop hit, a high E at 18 seconds.
It was always a lovely day with this man in it, and low-key happiness never felt so lovely indeed. 9
Happy Anniversary
Little River Band
Peaked at #16
Previously the only song in my head that celebrated anniversaries as an event was The Anniversary Waltz. And an episode of The Flintstones.
In which Wilma’s anniversary present from Fred turned out to be a stolen piano, upon which was played an obnoxious, deliberately repetitive anniversary song.
This isn’t that, and the music’s tight, and still there’s a lot of so-what going on. 6
The Name Of The Game
ABBA
Peaked at #12
I like Susan Saint James. Has zero to do with the single actually written for ABBA: The Movie.
But when I think of the song, I think of the 1969 TV series which co-stared SSJ and earned her an Emmy.
As it happens, though, the Penny Lane-esque flourishes, the intricate harmonies, the description of burgeoning romance could have been an award-winner for mythical drama all its own. 9
Thunder Island
Jay Ferguson
Peaked at #9
Another late-1960s TV throwback: Danger Island, the original kiddie live-action drama part of The Banana Splits, a part of most every ‘70s kids television heritage that aired on NBC back in 1968.
Danger Island? …well, the plot’s barely there, but it seems to be a kiddie version of Live And Let Die, crossed with Lord Of The Flies. And starring Jan-Michael Vincent.
Or something, because it was a bit dim even for me, an overgrown kid at heart. Anyway, the two visions intermingle with this song about sex featuring some nice harmonies and guitar by Joe Walsh.
Also, Jay wrote the theme to The Office, for those who care. 7
Theme From Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
Meco
Peaked at #25
I still haven’t seen Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, which I understand was enough of a big deal that my father may have taken someone who isn’t me to see it.
The theme is based on a five-note motif within the movie, but here it’s drowned in the campy disco you expected to find on radio in, say, 1976.
There is a better version out there… 4
Ffun
Con Funk Shun
Peaked at #23
A ffunky number which is always struck me as a bit fforeign to my ears.
See, the feeling I always got when I featured this song in my memory bank was one of ffrivolity without much feeling or emotion ffermenting in its core.
But it features a fflute solo that stokes the ffire of ffancy earworm magic. Gotta love the disco era for ffeaturng a lot of ffluff without fforgetting the ffire of ffinely thrilling ffreefform ffunk. 7
Too Hot Ta Trot
Commodores
Peaked at #24
The last song for 8 years that would hit the Top 40 without Lionel Richie singing lead (but playing saxophone).
The band’s drummer said that it’s not exactly a song they wasted time on, y’know, actually writing, it was just a chant.
And sometimes that’s enough. 7
Turn To Stone
Electric Light Orchestra
Peaked at #13
Frenetic symphonic disco-rock which literally swirls while big hooks abound.
Jeff Lynne is one of those musicians that never seems to get their due for the way they invent a wall of sound without having to murder to get it.
In 2017, though, when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, it seemed a lot of folks finally remembered that they really weren’t a one-man band that deserved anonymity. 8
Native New Yorker
Odyssey
Peaked at #21
This has always had a feel of being the first Lifetime movie disco song.
It’s subtle and sleek, and a stylin’ appreciation of the hard-knock people on the club scene of the late-‘70s.
On the one hand, “You’re no tramp, but you’re no lady”, but on the other, “You’re the heart and soul of New York City.
Which – I was 5, after all – but once Thelma Evans danced to it on an episode of Good Times, I admit that I understood it (OK, later, but I did). 8
Long, Long Way From Home
Foreigner
Peaked at #20
I only vaguely knew of Foreigner from things like WKRP In Cincinnati. But once I became a classic-rock DJ, I discovered there was more to them than just being horny rock stars.
There’s a bit of intricate guitar on the intro, and a cold wall of horns at the end, and in between there’s a lot of shouting about surviving, once more, in New York City.
An autobiographical note for Lou Gramm, who had moved there from Rochester, upstate.
There’s a certain foreboding going on that I liked, playing against type. 8
Theme From Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
John Williams
Peaked at #13
As far as I know, this song is incredibly difficult to get, not even on iTunes. But I actually bought a Billboard compilation CD a few years ago just for this one song.
There’s a reason, and it’s John Williams’s fun, contemporary approach to that five-note serenade key to the movie.
This isn’t your usual soundtrack score song; it’s better, because it actually sounds like you could hear it fresh on AM or FM pop radio.
The synth is clean, the rhythm is pop, and it hits a groove that makes it bore into your head a little bit. I bought it as a completist, and walked away a fan. 9
Coming up Tomorrow in Part 2:
The Four Basic Food Groups of Squishy Men, CHiPs and Dips, Short People and False Bravado.
And what about Naomi ?
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Irish! So glad to see you here, and this was a lot of fun. Looking forward to part two.
As to your ratings, as is often the case, we agree more than disagree, and where we disagree it’s with the softer sounds that I’ll often bump up a few points. So …a 6 for Falling and (What a) Wonderful World and a 7 for Street Corner Serenade.
I’d argue that Happy Anniversary warrants a closer listen. It’s in the Every Breath You Take school of misunderstood lyric hits. It’s a mean little kiss-off of a song, and so for me at least more interesting than most of their stuff. A 7 seems right and I could be persuaded on an 8.
I’m with you, cst…I love “Happy Anniversary” a lot more than I used to.
But when I look back baby
When I look back to what we had
And I know I’m countin’ good times
But there were just as many bad
The title of the song could probably be written “Happy” Anniversary, as the tone is sarcastic.
Irish!!!
After the breakup of my engagement in 2007 (not my choice), I drowned my sorrows in a blog I wrote. Over the next year, it became fairly popular, and something I wrote once a week was a look back at the charts from a random week in the 80s.
Birds of a feather, I guess.
My reminiscing about the songs was more personal that yours here – and my blog a little TOO personal, and brought unwanted attention about a year later. But, for a brief moment, when I was receiving comments from the Four Corners of the Earth, I felt like I was king of the world.
Can we make this a weekly installment?
> Can we make this a weekly installment?
If anybody is looking for me, I’ll be over in the corner, reciting a novena.
Good to see you here Irish and a great idea. There’s quite a lot of these that I don’t know – can’t say I have definitive proof but it feels like there was a lot more exclusivity between the US / UK charts back then and not as much crossover.
Two versions of Close Encounters took me by surprise. Jay Ferguson’s luxuriant mane is a thing of wonder.
The link to the corresponding UK chart is here; https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/19780205/7501/
Proof that as the Odyssey cover attests it was a big hit in ‘England’ (Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish not so keen on it apparently) as it was at #6. War and Bill Withers were also in the charts with the same singles while ABBA, Rita Coolidge, Bee Gees, ELO and Donna Summer were there with different singles.
Great stuff, irish. I’m always down for chart stuff (jb over at the similarly named site thjkoc.net does something like this, drawing personal reflection from countdowns). And 1978 is particularly good for me. I’d been aware of pop music prior to then (I believe “Convoy” was the first contemporary song to get stuck in my head, in preschool), but 1978 was the year I consciously started seeking out radio listening time (and my sister’s growing collection of 45s). The Grease soundtrack was the first current album that I knew all the songs, start to finish. And while I may have heard bits of AT40 prior to that, it was the Summer of ’78 that my brain first clicked on at hearing Casey Kasem count ’em down (sometime during the number one reign of “Shadow Dancing”).
I second thegue, please make this a weekly (or at least somewhat regular) column.
Oh, and ymmv, but to my ears there’s not a truly bad song in that group of 20 (and the Bill Withers tune is the best of a good crop… perhaps even my favorite single of the year).
While I always paid attention to the radio that was nearly always on on the kitchen counter, It was probably another 12 months before I started listening to the radio intensely on my own. I was 7 1/2 for this chart.
Cindy Bullens’ “It’s Raining on Prom Night” is the best deep cut.
Welcome irishbeartx!
Great intro column. Hopefully it will be your irishbear™ here at tnocs.com.
I only know a few of these cuts, and I do like those a lot: ABBA, Bill Withers, the BeeGees. The others I’m a bit suspicious about. I just don’t think this is my particular niche.
I gave that “Jack and Jill” song a try, and it is creepy. I don’t think it’s the sexual sleaziness per se that makes it so rank, it’s the attempt to dress it up as innocent and innocuous. At least “Back Door Man” owns the sleaze.
Oh, I guess I can’t do html superscript. Well, unlike Raydio, I’m owning it!
A noble effort. Fixed it for ya, PoA. 🙂
Well, shut my mouth…it’s an irish article, spotlighting a late 70s Billboard chart, no less. Delicious.
I am so with you on seeing those old paper charts that are a snapshot of pop music from days gone by. It makes me want to dive back in time and listen to these songs on some radio station back in the day.
Of all of those songs, I probably like “Name of the Game” or “Night Fever” best. I really love the old Ray Parker, Jr. songs as Raydio, but “Jack and Jill”‘s lyrics are a little problematic. “You Can’t Change That” remains an all timer for me.
There are a couple here that I don’t know (but don’t really care about), but I am going to need to make time for WAR’s “Galaxy”. I’m intrigued.
Also, “I Love You”, by Donna Summer is definitely a 7. I’ve known the song forever, because I owned it on record very early on, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard it on the radio outside of AT40 reruns. Part of its problem is that the song right before it on the album is “Rumor Has It”, which is a 10/10. It fails by comparison.
One of my favorite activities as a teen was when I would be with a friend on a Saturday, and we would play records for each other. We were just sharing our excitement and wonder about songs we loved. Those times were golden.
This article makes me want to get together with all of you guys and play music for each other.
Thanks, irish! This is great.
I was at college in the Finger Lakes area that winter. Ooh boy, what a snow storm. The few cafeteria workers managed to get there struggled to feed all us hungry college kids with whatever they had stowed away. Classes were cancelled. We spent our time playing records in the dorm, not listing to Top 40, so I don’t know many of these songs.
So I’ll be spending my day on YouTube. As if my productivity wasn’t low enough.
This is wonderful. I was older than 5 and I remember every one of these playing on the ever-present radio in our apartment. It was the first place that I had lived where I had complete control over the music played, and I listened to radio and records constantly.
One more thing:
https://youtu.be/nf8ZAMRO1DU
I got an email notice from Duran Duran HQ a couple hours ago I am being gifted with another DC show from them in September. I squealed, and said to myself, this day could not possibly get any better….
Then I come here and find Irish has gifted us with not only his presence, but a glorious inaugural tnocs.com post. Hot Dayum.
I could cry from the joy I am currently feeling. 😁
[Virtual Bear Hugs for irishbear…]
I miss rooting for songs. Off the top of my head, this is what I remember, mostly because it underperformed.
Whip It-Devo(#14)
Flash-Queen(#42)
Like the Weather-10,000 Maniacs(#68)
If I Was Your Girlfriend-Prince(#67)
Better Be Home Soon-Crowded House(#42)
Fall At Your Feet-Crowded House(#75)
Trouble Me-10,000 Maniacs(#44)
The new normal is to occupy seven of the top ten spots. Where is the fun in that?
amusingly old-fashioned just how many truly adult performers populated the music charts back then
Fun fact, Art Garfunkel in 1978 was the same age Drake is now
Good welcome to you, @Zeusaphone! Glad to have you here!
Your recruiting efforts, whatever they are, have been fruitful.
I saw somebody post something about “tnocs dot com” over on Stereogum and wondered what it was.
How else would someone find this place?
Indeed. 🙂
Glad that you took the time to seek us out!
I’m always looking for ways to spread the word and grow our membership and views.
It’s tricky: As I’ve mentioned before, as the siterunner here, it feels self-serving and a little bit wrong for me to frequently post links, or otherwise plug this site over at SG. However, if our readers do so, it feels more legit, more “peer-to-peer,” and like it might be OK to do so.
As always, any mentions at other places or in social media from y’all are always hugely welcome and greatly appreciated.
Zeusaphone! Good to have you here!
How much is that in rabbit years?
Great post, Irishbeartx! Two things to add here:
I spy with my little eye…
… a cocaine bear!
No, thanks God it’s a much friendlier Irishbear!
Welcome to the party!
Now your homework assignment is…
COMPLETE!
A+
hey Irish – thanks for doing this. My comments follow:
“Galaxy” was a bit too space age-y for me back in the day. But it was a a good jam. 7
“Our Love” followed her ballad boilerplate to a tee but the parent album showed her stretching out, especially onthe track “La Costa”. 8
I got to see Heatwave in their first US appearance at the Valley Forge Music Fair. “Always and Forever” will always be a standard with me. 8
“Lovely Day” is a good karaoke song for me but I can’t hold that one note as long as he can. RIP Still Bill. 9
Con Funk Shun reminded me of a B-lebel Ohio Players but they had some good jams and “Fun” was one of them. 8
“Too Hot Ta Trot” was a funky groove that was on the “Thank God It’s Friday” soundtrack. I know – I saw that movie with friend Carlotta the night it opened. 7