Do you remember the 21st night of September?

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.  

1978 : September - Earth Wind And Fire

Seriously?  There's got to be some social media nonsense going on here, surely?  I'll be interested to see how well this did in the charts - I don't remember it being that successful.  It's also the first one in some time I've felt the need to listening to - I remembered the chorus, but the rest of it kinda slipped my mind.  

And well, the reason for that is that there wasn't really a "rest of it" to remember - it's 3:35 of sameness.  Not unpleasant sameness, but very much sameness - it's also somewhat more underwhelming that I remembered, with me expecting quite a few tracks from this year that I would pick above this one.

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the song, but does have the following amusing anecdote "(songwriter) Willis was initially bothered by the gibberish "ba-dee-ya" lyric (vocalist) White used through the song, and begged him to rewrite it: "I just said, 'What the fuck does 'ba-dee-ya' mean?' And he essentially said, 'Who the fuck cares?"".  It also reminds me that Philip Bailey was in EWF - I always forget he's done slightly more in his life than "Easy Lover" with Phil Collins.

Wikipedia also sets me straight on how successful it was - #3 in the UK but #1 in the US, selling a million physical copies over there but now certified at 6 million units,  And I'm so looking forward to finding out why, so let's look at the cultural impact section.  Ah, there you go -  it started at "Newcastle United F.C. where fans started singing a chant about player Chancel Mbemba in the autumn of 2015".  That explains it!  Oh no, it must be this - "the song was played many times at the Raglan Road Bar, Tramore, Co. Waterford, Ireland to indicate that Scott O'Donohue had turned 18, the legal drinking age in the Republic of Ireland".  WTAF?!?

Well, it's always possible that the Trolls video featuring the band, Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick might have had more of an impact.  I was at least aware of that one, but it's also been used in a Kohl's Xmas advert, on a Guardians Of The Galaxy rollercoaster at Epcot, in Night At The Museum and Demi Adejuyigbe recorded YouTube videos of himself dancing to it every year from 2016 to 2021 (and the band featured in the last one), apparently getting millions of views.  And, you know what, the guy doesn't muck about.

Wikipedia also gives us a couple of cover versions - Phats and Small's got to #25 in the UK in '99 and Kirk Franklin had a minor hit in the US in '07.  I'm not expecting secondhandsongs.com to give us too many more - it doesn't feel like a very coverable song.  And, apart from the ones I've mentioned, it comes up with a big fat zero by anyone I've ever heard of.

So, Wikipedia has convinced me why it's won the year, but it hasn't convinced me it's the best track of the year - I'm expecting the competition to turn up some way better songs.  The best selling tracks of the year in the UK were Boney M's "Rivers Of Babylon/Brown Girl", John & Olivia's "You're The One That I Want" and "Summer Loving", The Commodores' "Three Times A Lady" and, errrr, Father Abraham & The Smurfs "Smurf Song".  Some of those songs are better than others, I think it's fair to say.  

Other tracks offered up from the top ten are a load more tracks from Grease, Althea & Donna's "Uptown Top Ranking" (a cool track), Bill Withers's "Lovely Day", ABBA's "Take A Chance On Me", ELO's "Mr Blue Sky", The Bee Gees "Staying Alive" and "Night Fever", Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights", Patti Smith's "Because The Night" (written by Bruce Springsteen), Plastic Bertrand's "Ca Plane Pour Moi", 10cc's "Dreadlock Holiday", Sylvester's "You Make Me Feel", The Jackson's "Blame It On The Boogie", Chic's "Le Freak" and The Village People's "YMCA" - it certainly feels like the musical variety is increasing as time progresses.

The US top ten for the year is quite interesting - The Bee Gees have three tracks in there at #2, #4 and #6, but #1 is "Shadow Dancing" by their brother Andy, which barely dented the charts here (and he also had #9 and #45 in the year-end chart as well).  There isn't a lot else that jumps out at me, but it was nice to see Bonnie Tyler's "It's a Heartache" and Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" in there.

There are a load of decent tracks in the suggestions, but very few I'd say would obviously take the year - and I doubt that Earth Wind And Fire would have taken the year without the help they received from various, particularly random, sources.  But, receive it they did and here we are - I can't say I love the track but it's certainly an iconic track which others obviously do.

1977 - Another fine track from Rumours
1979 - A much more popular track than I remember