The actor who occupied the top two spots in the charts at once in 1978
There was no need to look back during the 1970s.
The bohemian hysteria of the ‘60s had platformed a deeply forward-thinking musical landscape that was spearheaded by some of the best musicians in history, taking music forward and never looking back. The varying subgenres of rock and roll battled it out with soul and disco to make a decade of diverse musical ideas, and the fans were lapping it up.
So sure, in the midst of this wild experimentalism, the ‘60s were but a nothing but a memory, a vignette if you will, of this new rose-tinted view. But when it came to reminiscing about the years gone by, there was absolutely no room for eulogising over the conservatism of the post-war world in the ‘50s.
What was happening in the ‘70s was pretty much a direct retaliation of all of that, and to the pearl clutchers of that generation, Elvis Presley’s knee wobble felt like the gateway to liberal hell. So it was odd then that perhaps the biggest film of the decade was one that thrust its youthful viewers back into the monochromatic worlds of ‘50s America: Grease.
John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John portrayed star-crossed lovers with an appetite for artistic expression, stuck in the conservatism of ‘50s America. Of course, it had a small amount of social commentary laced into it that weakly pushed back against the problematic nature of its backdrop, but ultimately, I look back on it and wonder why, of all the film settings, it was that one that was so successful in the ‘70s?
Well, maybe it was the music that was a part of the film. Because two of the tracks written were popular enough to take both the first and second spot on the UK charts, in November of ‘78.
What songs from Grease topped the charts?
Clearly, the charisma of John Travolta’s lead character tapped into something on British soil, because his aching heartbreak songs ‘Summer Nights’ (duet with Olivia Newton-John) and ‘Sandy’ took the one and two spots, respectively, the first week of November that year, the former ultimately soundtracking a string of karaoke duets that has swept the world ever since its release in 1978.
There’s a sort of romantic simplicity to the song that made it a perfect fit for the surface-level idealism of the ‘50s backdrop it was set in, but it was a rather sad indictment for ‘70s music and marked its experimental decline at the end of the decade.
On the horizon was the ‘80s, a decade that built off the dewy-eyed cinematic sentimentalism of films like Grease and the subsequent chart success it could offer. All of a sudden, music was a commodity, and the two-pronged commercial approach of films and their soundtracks swept the charts and box offices. Ironically, the man who pioneered that lucrative approach was the biggest star of the 1950s: one Elvis Presley.
