That year, 18 acts earned their first number one songs, such as Leo Sayer, Rose Royce, Mary MacGregor, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Daryl Hall and John Oates, ABBA, David Soul, Thelma Houston, Fleetwood Mac, Bill Conti, Alan O'Day, Shaun Cassidy, Andy Gibb, The Emotions, Meco, and Debby Boone.
Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., already having hit number one with The 5th Dimension, also earn their first number one song as solo acts.
Leo Sayer, Stevie Wonder and The Eagles were the only acts to hit number one more than once with each having two songs.
An asterisk (*) by a date indicates an unpublished, "frozen" week, due to the special double issues that Billboard published in print at the end of the year for their year-end charts.
This began at the end of 1976, though charts would be published during the frozen week from the early 1990s onward, when Billboard made their charts available electronically or online.