The Top 10 Hits That Took Over Fall 1977

As the summer gave way to the fall in 1977, so too did the Top 10 hits that took over the summer that year, fading away in favor of a new slew of songs. The final and increasingly crisp and chilly months of 1977 had a soundtrack all their own, and it's a time capsule of a spectacularly varied, historic, and even a little corny period in pop music history.

Not only was it the best year of the decade for disco, but 1977 was also a monumental year for punk rock, despite the continued domination of mega-popular mainstream rock, soft rock, and funk. On the singles chart, all those genres and more competed for spots in the Top 10, and a handful of tunes repeatedly landed high in that top echelon of the Hot 100. According to Billboard chart data from the era, these are the songs — by the likes of Debby Boone, Crystal Gayle, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Carly Simon, and others — that record buyers and radio listeners couldn't get enough of at the tail end of 1977.

"You Light Up My Life" was one of the biggest hit singles of all time. A devotional ballad that Debby Boone interpreted as a hymn, the track spent six weeks climbing the Hot 100 chart after beginning in September 1977; then, "You Light Up My Life" moved up to No. 1, and it stayed there for a total of 10 weeks. "You Light Up My Life" headed up the list from mid-October until the first days of winter. The tune won the Oscar for Best Original Song for the film of the same name.

Boasting one of the thickest, funkiest grooves of any '70s single and incorporating jazz flourishes, "Boogie Nights" was the work of the large European group Heatwave. Written by member Rod Temperton, the relentlessly danceable song played at numerous parties and dances in the fall of 1977, enough to send it to the No. 2 position for two weeks in the middle of November, shut out of the No. 1 spot by "You Light Up My Life."

The game-changing sci-fi movie "Star Wars" quietly hit movie theaters back in May 1977, but before long it was setting box office records and dominating the year's pop culture. It dovetailed with another big-in-'77 phenomenon, as one-named session player and producer Meco made a disco medley out of John Williams' recognizable "Star Wars" score and "Cantina Band," the music played by a group of creatures from space in one memorable bar scene. The combined "Star Wars Theme / Cantina Band" was on the Hot 100 for 20 weeks, and for the first two weeks of October 1977, it was the No. 1 song in the U.S.

K.C. and the Sunshine Band provided disco record collectors and discotheque denizens with a seemingly endless stream of frenetic, propulsive dance tunes in the late 1970s. With as much brass as a big band and powered by leader Harry Casey's spacey keyboard work, "Keep it Comin' Love" was an unstoppable smash. First popping up on the Hot 100 in the summer, it raced up the charts in the early weeks of the fall of 1977. On October 1, it reached its ultimate top position of No. 2.

In 1977, Carly Simon briefly switched from making sensitive and vulnerable singer-songwriter folk-pop to grand, romantic, and adoring movie themes. "Nobody Does It Better" wasn't written by Simon, but by Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager for the James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me." Ostensibly about charming super-spy 007 and full of sexy and suggestive lyrics, "Nobody Does it Better" earned its creators an Academy Award nomination and Simon a No. 2 hit, which is where it landed on the pop chart in late October 1977.

Led by singing, string-instrument-toting siblings George and Louis, the Brothers Johnson were all over the R&B charts in the second half of the 1970s. The group slowed down their hard-charging dance floor-ready sound a bit with a cover of Sugie Otis's 1971 song "Strawberry Letter No. 23," a spooky, hypnotic, and sensual keyboard-driven that fared much better in the charts by the time 1977 rolled around. On the pop chart for three months and into the autumn of 1977, "Strawberry Letter No. 23" peaked at No. 5.