Even after decades of parodies and references, that Saturday Night Fever scene still has a certain primal power to it. That scene, from director John Badham’s monster hit Saturday Night Fever, is high on the list of iconic 1977 film moments, right up there with Princess Leia’s holographic image suddenly appearing on a young dreamer’s mechanical-hut floor, or with the alien spaceship bleeping its friendship song at the American authorities. For those two minutes, Tony Manero is a star. Every time he looks at the crowd, people erupt. And for two minutes, young Tony slides and bumps and rolls and air-humps and ass-twitches his way around this dancefloor, turning it into his house. The crowd knows what’s coming, so everyone moves out of the way. Manero slides his way onto the lit-up dancefloor. But when he gets on the dance floor, Tony Manero becomes pure human electricity. Neither does his boss at the hardware store. He’s a 19-year-old Italian kid from a working-class Brooklyn family. In his everyday life, Tony Manero is nothing. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.Ī disembodied voice calls it out: “Look out! If he gets on a roll, he’s taking over again!” And then he gets on a roll, and he takes over again.