7/30/14

Summer Chart Flashback: Summer Singles 1978

In terms of best years for music EVER, 1982 reigns supreme.  A runner-up could easily be 1978.  Single by single and album by album, a lot of really, really great music came out in 1978. HERC has been slowly revealing his favorite singles of 1978 through a series of posts here on The Hideaway but today's feature isn't about that.  Today is the fifth installment of his year-by-year (1974-1983, his Favorite Decade in Music) Summer Singles countdown based on the weekly WLS surveys he used to collect. Between May 27, 1978 and September 2, 1978, a total of eighty-six different singles made the Top Forty-fives weekly chart.  Only seven of them made the chart each of those fifteen weeks and only one of those seven made it all the way to #1 - and it's #2 on this countdown.  The overall #1 song for the Summer of 1978, according to those WLS surveys, peaked at #2 but it is the only one of eighty-six singles to spend all fifteen weeks in the Top 10.


weeks @
Top 45Top 10#1rank
745If I Can't Have You - Yvonne Elliman
1044Dukey Stick - George Duke
1043Stuff Like That - Quincy Jones
1142Take Me To The Next Phase - The Isley Brothers*
1241Disco Inferno - The Trammps
1240Girl Calling - Chocolate Milk
739Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad - Meat Loaf
838Bluer Than Blue - Michael Johnson
6237Hot Blooded - Foreigner
836Only The Good Die Young - Billy Joel
1035Count On Me - Jefferson Starship
7234Emotion - Samantha Sang
1133Can't Smile Without You - Barry Manilow
1032Close The Door - Teddy Pendergrass
1131Stayin' Alive - Bee Gees
930Goodbye Girl - David Gates
9329Jack & Jill - Raydio
928Still The Same - Bob Seger*
8326TBoogie Oogie Oogie - A Taste Of Honey
1426TRunaway Love - Linda Clifford
85125Three Times A Lady - Commodores
11424Flashlight - Parliament
12323Dust In The Wind - Kansas
9622Grease - Frankie Valli
11521Closer I Get To You - Roberta Flack with Donny Hathaway
1320On Broadway - George Benson
10619Copacabana - Barry Manilow
13418Night Fever - Bee Gees
1517Shame - Evelyn "Champagne" King
13216Imaginary Lover - Atlanta Rhythm Section
1215You Belong To Me - Carly Simon
12214Take A Chance On Me - ABBA
118213Miss You - Rolling Stones
15812Dance With Me - Peter Brown with Betty Wright
14611With A Little Luck - Wings
14610It's A Heartache - Bonnie Tyler
1399Last Dance - Donna Summer
13108Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty
14727Too Much Too Little Too Late - Johnny Mathis with Deniece Williams
1556Use To Be My Girl - The O'Jays
1555Feels So Good - Chuck Mangione
131144King Tut - Steve Martin and the Toot Uncommons
1573The Groove Line - Heatwave
151362Shadow Dancing - Andy Gibb
15151You're the One That I Want - John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John
*these two songs are not included in Spotify playlist below





Whenever available, single versions were used in the playlist above.

Gary Pfeifer did the survey scans
raw survey data courtesy of Doug Scherer & Mike Gallant


2 comments:

  1. That is one fantastic chart list/playlist.

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    Replies
    1. It's got that thick n nasty overdose of funk five song block at numbers 44-40 so I've been enjoying it on shuffle, to mix things up.

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