The 20th of February 1975
Official U.K. Singles Chart results from Sunday the 16th to Saturday the 22nd of February 1975
Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 15th of February
Results counted from Sunday the 16th,
published on Tuesday the 18th,
and broadcast on BBC Radio 1 on Sunday the 23rd of February 1975.
Gloria Gaynor
Never Can Say Goodbye
At No.33, on “The Top 50 U.K. Singles Chart”, the week of my 3rd Birthday, is Gloria Gaynor with Never Can Say Goodbye.
The anticipation of Disco…
…has been threatening to break through now for a good couple of years.
I’ve already met a couple of earlier contenders which, at that point, were still feeling their way into that sound and evolving it into something which probably hadn’t even been labelled with that moniker, but Gloria’s track blows whatever hesitancy, which may still be subduing it behind any further walls, clean away.
The track of course…
…had previously been a UK Top 40 hit for the Jackson 5, back in the summer of 1971; a mere seven months before I’d appeared in this world. At that time, it had been more of a mature song even for an 11-year-old Michael to lead on (the group had recorded the song the summer before release in June 1970); and then Issac Hayes had put his own soulful style into his version, which released barely a month after the Jackson 5’s.
The most familiar term…
…up to this point, to describe this type of music had been something like uptempo R&B, or modern dance music.
Although the term “Disco”, to mean a genre, and which the Oxford English Dictionary would in the near future define as “strongly rhythmical pop music intended for dancing”, had already been indelibly set down in print, it had done so in the USA publication of Rolling Stone, in which journalist Vince Aletti had written a piece entitled “Discotheque Rock ’72: Paaaaarty!” in September 1973, about this growing sub-culture which was emerging from underground New York clubs.
Over here in the UK, this type of sound is being naturally mixed in with the burgeoning Northern Soul movement, who are exploiting high energy dance R&B sixties soul music, which has, up until recently, previously gone unnoticed, when those songs had originally been released in the previous decade.
The tide had been slowly coming in, and now we witness the moment it’s literally about to hit. A good example is the footage of the small audience in the Top of the Pops studio in early January (which is attached below). Young adults and late teenagers who come dressed in their platforms and flares, some in their best Bay City Roller outfits, even a few Wombles, who (when they’re not trying to avoid the huge cameras or staring up at themselves on the TV monitors), are thinking ‘what the hell is this?!’ but they’re finding it infectious just the same.
Yes, right at this very moment, in early 1975, the term “Disco” still isn’t widely known over here, but after this new re-interpretation of the Jackson 5 tune from Gloria, it is only a matter of a few more weeks before it will come out into the mainstream, and sweep our nation, as THE exciting new music genre about to hit like a tidal wave, sweeping the whole of the western world, including the original artists who’d had this hit in the first place, along with it.
The single…
…quietly snuck into the UK Top 50 at No.50, on the first winter day of December last year in 1974, and had, over the course of that month, quietly begun climbing up through the numbers until, after spending three weeks in the middle of the chart, it shot like a rocket up into the Top 10 at the beginning of this new year of 1975, to land at No.6.
As January progressed, it had gained even more attention, sending it first to No.4 before, on the 19th of that month, it hit a peak position of No.2, only being denied the top spot by the group now currently sitting a little further back from this position this week. But although this single drops back, it’s not by far; and doesn’t exit the Top 10 until fully into this month of February, where last week, it drops a heavy 22 places to land at No.27 before a smaller drop this week.
From here…
…it takes another bigger drop, down another 15 places, to No.48, before it departs the UK chart for good, with a solid 13 weeks of chart action behind it, and the floodgates opening to a new sound about to take almost everything in its immense wake.
The “A” Side
The “B” Side
“Never Can Say Goodbye” TV Live Vocal Performance (1974)
“Never Can Say Goodbye” Top of the Pops TV Backing Track over Closing Credits (2nd January 1975)
“Never Can Say Goodbye” Live Performance Helsinki, Finland (13th February 1975)
“Motown Medley” German Starparade TV Appearance (5th June 1975)
“Never Can Say Goodbye” Disco TV Appearance
“Never Can Say Goodbye” Spanish TV Appearance
“Never Can Say Goodbye” Live Performance
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