What song was number one the week Elvis Presley died?
Shortly after Elvis Presley died, Bruce Springsteen was leafing through a magazine.
He happened upon a polemic by Lester Bangs that he would later paraphrase in conversation with Dave Marsh, explaining, “Elvis is the last thing we’re all going to agree on. [Bangs] hadn’t talked to Public Enemy as of yet, you know, but he says Elvis is the last thing we’re all going to agree on.”
He saw the hip-swivelling rocker as the first and last great unifier in music. “After this, you are going to have your heroes, and I’m going to have mine. You’re gonna like Joni Mitchell, I’m gonna like Iggy Pop. So instead of saying goodbye to Elvis, I’m going to say goodbye to you.”
While he might have, as Bob Dylan put it, become a “relic” by the 1970s, when he passed away on August 16th in 1977, it would once again be reconciled that he changed the world. As President Jimmy Carter said upon the news breaking, “Elvis Presley’s death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique, irreplaceable.”
Carter continued, “More than 20 years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equalled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense. And he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness, and good humour of this country.”
While the authorities in that very same country – most notably the FBI – saw him as a “pervert” and force of troubled disruption, by and large, time would reveal him to be rather more conservative than they had first feared. To some extent, this revelation would be both his making and his undoing. As Springsteen via Bangs correctly identified, the youth agreed, with John Lennon famously saying, “Before Elvis, there was nothing.” But soon enough, they would disagree with him, with John Lennon famously saying, “He died when he went into the army. That’s when they killed him, that’s when they castrated him.”
It was a brutal remark by the bespectacled Beatle, but there was more than a grain of truth to it in the eyes of many. In the three years and eight months before he was enlisted, ‘The King’ scored ten US number ones. In the 17 years and five months following his discharge, he hit the top only eight times. In fact, his final number one arrived way back in 1969.
What song was number one the week Elvis Presley died in 1977?
Simply put, the world had moved on from Elvis, and the charts proved that. It wasn’t just ‘The King’ struggling to reclaim his throne by the late ’70s. True to Springsteen’s proclamation, the charts showed that the days of a uniformly beloved icon dominating the charts were over, and fast fads related to songs rather than artists had arisen.
This is even displayed by the fact that two very different songs occupied the top spots in the UK and the US when he passed. ‘Angelo’ by Brotherhood of Man was in its only week at number one on the UK chart. Meanwhile, ‘Best of My Love’ by The Emotions was beginning a four-week run at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 during the week Elvis died, bookended by Andy Gibb’s ‘I Just Want To Be Your Everything’.
While ‘Way Down’ would become a posthumous chart topper in the UK, the US was less sympathetic. The radio stations in the States had moved on from him, and even though ‘Way Down’ did see a surge in sales in his homeland, it was only enough to see the single peak at 18th. The legend that the world had once solely agreed to crown as ‘The King’ was now even split by regions.
It was reflected in the charts surrounding his death. In Britain, the wholesale pop of Brotherhood of Man’s ‘Angelo’ sat at pretty before giving way to Elvis himself just days later, suggesting there was still room for yesterday’s stars alongside today’s forgettable, fleeting hits. Across the Atlantic, however, The Emotions’ disco-infused ‘Best of My Love’ was leading a musical revolution that Elvis no longer belonged to. ‘The King’s influence remained unquestioned, but by 1977 America had already crowned a new generation, soon to be dethroned by the next, and then the next, and then the next…
