The Songs Of The Summer: Episode #9: 1978

Welcome to another Sun-Soaked episode of The Songs Of The Summer Series from friend and Contributing Author Ozmoe!

This week: Remembering 1978…

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As a reminder or for those just joining us, I categorize a summer song basically as the fun tune you’d like to do at karaoke with your friends. It’s hummable, singable, danceable, and probably some other kind of optimistic labels I can’t think of right now.

tnocs.com summer charts expert ozmoe

If you were John Travolta or Barry Gibb, you were pretty much the music scene for the summer of 1978.

Travolta starred in the two biggest movie musicals of the time, Saturday Night Fever and Grease.

Those soundtracks’ hits clogged the Hot 100.

From November 12, 1977, through October 21, 1978, at least one single from either movie appeared – every week – in Billboard’s top 10. 

Meanwhile, Gibb was at least co-writer for many of the Saturday Night Fever hits, as well as the title tune for Grease. He also sang on a few like Night Fever, which was going down the charts at the end of spring, as was another Saturday Night Fever tune he wrote, If I Can’t Have You, sung by Yvonne Elliman. Those songs received strong recurrent play on many stations the following months, so you may consider them summer songs.

Most notoriously, for his brother Andy Gibb, Barry Gibb co-wrote Shadow Dancing, the biggest song of the season and Billboard’s top song of the year for 1978. Its stay at number one for seven weeks has some controversy. Read Tom Breihan’s summary of Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street for more details.

Regardless, to me, Shadow Dancing and Baker Street aren’t quite summer songs – those upbeat, pleasant numbers that get your voice singing and your toes tapping along.

Instead, these are my top choices. The Travolta-Gibb effect appears here, but so do others.

As always, comment and rank your top three below, with “one” being your favorite. All are listed chronologically based on their Hot 100 peak.

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• The Trammps: Disco Inferno

Peaking at number 11 in late May and early June, this was the biggest hit from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack not involving Barry Gibb. While on the pop chart the previous spring, it stopped at number 53, but the re-release on the heels of the movie’s success was a different story.

This propulsive stomper had millions of listeners chanting “Burn, baby, burn!” while lead singer Jimmy Ellis effortlessly sounded as tough and tight as the backing musicians, including drawing out the word “satisfaction” for nearly 10 seconds at the start of the final verse. 

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• Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta: You’re the One That I Want

Grease was not a surefire hit. While its theatrical incarnation was still on Broadway for its sixth year when the movie opened, the original cast recording had never appeared in Billboard’s Top 200 Albums. Therefore, it’s not surprising that a song written for its leads would be the debut single from the soundtrack.

It helped that Travolta’s vocals were much stronger than in his last hit, Let Her In, and that Livvy projected sensuality instead of her usual innocence. The follow-up, Summer Nights, may seem a natural here- but it didn’t enter the top 40 until August 19.

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• The O’Jays: Use Ta Be My Girl

Amid the disco influx, this number was a breath of fresh air, giving pop music listeners a new shot of the old smooth soul sound that they had not heard pretty much since, well, when the O’Jays had their first top 10 hit in 1972 with Backstabbers. Its chief assets were its casual language (yes, it’s “Ta” and “To” in the title) and a solid guitar groove that gave the O’Jays plenty of room to flex their vocal muscles. While the line “You can’t beat her cooking” hasn’t aged too well, the rest is a nice ode of regret for not treasuring a lady lost to another man.

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• Donna Summer: Last Dance

In his movie review book Leonard Maltin’s review of the flick Thank God It’s Friday, he described it as…

“Perhaps the worst film ever to have won some kind of Oscar…”

Ouch.

The latter honor was for this, the 1978 Best Song Oscar winner that showed Donna Summer’s pipes to full advantage. Like Love Hangover for Diana Ross two years earlier, this number started deceptively slow before breaking into a party anthem by the second verse, and it worked like a charm. The movie’s title tune hit number 22 around the same time…. but I wouldn’t classify it as a summer song the way this one is.

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• Barry Manilow: Copacabana (At the Copa)

I’m far from a Fanilow. In fact, Barry’s three chart toppers rank among my least favorite number ones of the 1970s. Having said that, he absolutely nailed this combination of story song and disco number.

Manilow wrote the lush music accompanying the tale of romance and danger, and the result captured the American public’s fancy so strongly that Barry starred in a TV movie musical based on it in 1985. And if that’s not enough: like three of the previous four candidates, it came from a movie in 1978: the non-musical comedy mystery Foul Play.

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• Frankie Valli: Grease

A musical set in the 1950s has a title song written in the 1970s done by a singer whose biggest success was in the 1960s.

Got all that?

The writer was of course our superstar Barry Gibb, and to his credit he made the composition sound like something other than a Bee Gees record, which foreshadowed his work as a writer and producer as the fortunes of the Brothers Gibb sank on the charts during the 1980s. So too did the musical career on the charts for Frankie Valli after this, although he remains a strong concert draw to this day.

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• A Taste Of Honey: Boogie Oogie Oogie

If the guitar licks on this number caught your attention from the start, then it did exactly when co-writer Janice Marie Johnson hoped it would achieve. Ticked off when her group played before stuffy crowds who resisted getting into their music, this song was her retort to that attitude, a smart mix of disco with rock overtones present.

This hit was big enough to earn A Taste of Honey the Grammy for Best New Artist of 1978, a dubious win at best, given how they only managed one other top 10 hit, a remake of Sukiyaki in 1981.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLxlCBYoPV4

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• Evelyn “Champagne” King: Shame

Here’s another disco hit, but man, what a hit it was. Featuring a funky sax prominent in the mix of its urgent orchestration, Shame also was graced by a lead vocalist who belted out the melody without oversinging it, as has unfortunately become the tendency in a lot of contemporary pop music. Add to that background singers who cooed sultry lines like:

Wrapped in your arms
Is where I want to be

…and you’ve got a song that aims to transcend its genre for universal appeal. I think it works wondrously well, and it’s a… shame we haven’t had more like it.

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So, what do you think? Am I wrong leaving out Shadow Dancing or Baker Street? Or any other 1978 summer hit?

Whatever the case, list them below along with your vote for the top three of 1978.

We’ll have another installment and another year, next week! 

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