Don’s Top 10 From January 5, 1978

(#8 last week) Talk about bad luck: Welch left Fleetwood Mac just before their huge success. Christine McVie helped make up for it with backup vocals on Welch's first of three solo hits.

(Debuts at #9)  The anti-irony song. Ah, yes, remember when Billy Joel had hair? Hey, it's Billy's world these days. We just live in it.

(#10 last week) What a great double-sided single! On the "B" side, "We Will Rock You". While top 40 radio played that somewhat (& seperately), album rock radio spliced the two songs together. By the way, Freddie Mercury's outfit in the video? Be glad the 70s are over. :-)

(#4 last week) This only peaked at #21 nationally, but you liked it a whole lot better, spending many weeks in the top 10 locally. Ironically, it was recorded here in New Jersey, in West Orange! Surprisingly, it won a cover batlle with Frankie Valli.

(#6 last week) This is interesting. Chic is so closely identified with disco. But Nile Rodgers has said Chic regarded itself as a rock band for the disco movement, whatever that means. Maybe Rodgers simply has a rock sensibility. But he knew the quickest way to platinum sales in 1978! You say the "yowsah" over & over, you ain't "rock". But still good.....

(#5 last week) Gayle, the younger sister of Loretta Lynn, is famed for her incredibly long hair. She also has blue eyes! Richard Leigh wrote this crossover smash, & Gayle has said that Leigh wrote the song because his dog had one brown eye & one blue eye.

(#11 last week) Hall & Oates-esque group formed in L.A. In the where-are-they-now department, bass player Ronn Moss has had the most successful afterlife in showbiz: since 1987, he's starred in the CBS soap "The Bold & The Beautiful" as "Ridge".

(#3 last week) My guess for why Linda never really got the critical acclaim she deserved: she didn't write her own material. But so what? Sinatra didn't. This one was done first by Roy Orbison in 1963.

(#2 last week) Has there ever been a song so loved, & so hated by so many people? There seemed to be no middle ground with this ballad, a cover version of the movie original, sung by Kasey Cisyk. Debby is related by marriage to George Clooney. Boone married Gabriel Ferrer on September 1, 1979. Like Boone, Ferrer is a member of another well-known Hollywood family. He is the son of Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney, the brother of actors Miguel Ferrer & Rafael Ferrer & the cousin of George Clooney.

(#1 last week; 3rd week at #1) Strangely, the first, advance single from "Saturday Night Fever" was a ballad, but it worked! The Gibb brothers wrote this for Yvonne Elliman, but RSO Records honcho Robert Stigwood heard the demo & was adamant that the Bee Gees record it themselves. Good move. Nationally, this stayed in the top 10 for 17 straight week, a record up to that point.