Abba’s ‘S.O.S.’ enjoyed a 3^rd week at the top of the charts and with The George Baker Selection’s ‘Paloma Blanca’ moving back up the charts to 3 and Gilbert O’Sullivan’s ‘I Don’t Love You, But I Think I Like You’ sitting at 2, we had a 3^rd straight week with 3 of the top 5 being by acts who were not from the big 3 nations (i.e. the UK, the US or SA). Abba joined 10 other acts who were sitting on 7 weeks at 1 and who all shared 15^th place on the list of weeks at 1 by an act.

Typically Tropical’s ‘Barbados’ took the climber of the week award for a second week running as it followed up last week’s 12 place climb with a further 4 place jump from 8 to 4. This was only the 3^rd time a song had climbed 4 or more the week after climbing 12 or more. Of the previous 2 times Alan Garrity’s 6 place jump after a 12 place jump was the biggest climber for those 2 weeks. The other time was when Lobo’s ‘I’d Love You To Want Me’ followed up a 12 place climb with a further 4 place jump, but the 4 place climb was not the biggest that week. As with last week, ‘Barbados’ was the only star rater climb we saw this week.

There were 2 songs sharing the faller of the week award and they were Van McCoy & Soul City Symphony’s ‘The Hustle’ and Geoff St. John’s ‘Kiss Me, Kiss Your Baby’ which both fell 3 places to land at 18 and 14 respectively.

The only song to leave the chart this week was John Lennon’s ‘Stand By Me’ which had spent 13 weeks in the top 20 and peaked at 1, spending a total of 4 week there, 2 more than his previous chart topper, ‘Imagine’. Lennon’s departure meant that we were back to just 1 song by a British act in the top 20, the equal all-time low. ‘Stand By Me’ had been the oldest on last week’s chart. The new oldest were Captain & Tennille’s ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’, Jonathan Butler’s ‘Please Stay’ and Johnny Nash’s ‘The Look In Your Eyes’ all of which sat on 12 weeks.

Gloria Gaynor provided our only new entry this week and, as with her 2 previous hits, ‘Walk On By’ was also a cover version of a song that had previously gone top 10 in the US. ‘Walk On By’ was written by Burt Bacharach & Hal David (giving them their 9^th and 8^th SA hits respectively as songwriters) and was originally recorded by Dionne Warwick whose version went to number 6 in the US and 9 in the UK. Gloria was not as successful as Dionne as her version only managed to get to 98 in the US and didn’t chart in the UK. In the rest of Europe it made 12 in Austria, 14 in Belgium, 17 in Germany and 19 in Holland. This new entry brought the number of hits by US acts in the top 20 back up to 10 after having dropped below this level for the last 2 weeks.

The George Baker Selection became the 45^th act to reach 50 weeks in the charts. They were the first Dutch act to manage this and the 5^th act not from the US, the UK or SA to do so.

On the local weeks count list, Jody Wayne took 6^th place for himself as his 72 weeks put him 1 ahead of Barbara Ray who fell into 7^th place.

Abba became the 21^st act to hit the 900 points mark. Their 916 points put them 19^th overall.

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