"He's My Girl" by David Hallyday

1987 / #79

Rate Your Music score: 2.17 out of 5!

Some of our local radio stations in Cincinnati made weird choices as to what songs to play, but this was one rare occasion when they actually admitted it.

This high-energy rocker was the title track from the movie He's My Girl. Evidently, the film was about a musician who wins a trip to Los Angeles, but he must take a woman with him, so his male friend poses as a woman.

And Q-102 played the living shit out of the song.

This may seem strange in and of itself, because Q-102 had such a small playlist, and the record only peaked at #79 on the Hot 100, the most authoritative chart in the beeswax. But the station promoted the movie along with the song. The problem with that is that the film was not a great critical or commercial success, so the Q-102 peeps felt somewhat embarrassed that they had hyped it so much.

A few months later, some of the station's DJ's admitted on the air that they botched this one. They said the movie folks gave the station a bunch of He's My Girl swag and encouraged them to play the record. It was payola. After that humiliation, the station's on-air crew ridiculed the film and the song every chance they got.

That wasn't the last act of payola in the American radio industry. In the ensuing years, stations in other cities were caught accepting payoffs to play certain records. The word drugola was popularized, as some programmers were accepting drugs as a payoff. Hypocritically, some of the performers of these records liked to brag about being "drug-free."

It was probably impossible to have a big hit on the American pop chart in the 1980s without some support from corrupt promoters. Read the book Hit Men: Power Brokers And Fast Money Inside The Music Business by Fredric Dannen.

I put "He's My Girl" in a category of minor hits from around that time that were played on Q-102 like there was no tomorrow. This category also includes lost hits like "Never Thought" by Dan Hill and "Wild Horses" by Gino Vannelli. Lots of low-charting records were megahits at lots of top 40 stations, but Dan, Gino, and David were a weird combination, and now we know "He's My Girl" was selected because of payola.

"Get Over It" by the Eagles

1994 / #31

Rate Your Music score: 2.7 out of 5!

The Eagles came back with a vengeance in 1994 after a 14-year breakup. And did they ever!

This was the first song written by Don Henley and Glenn Frey after the band reunited. It was about the group's frustration with TV talk show guests who blamed their many problems on everyone else and thought the "big, bad world" owed them. Talk shows like that were big at the time.

Not all the subject matter on these shows was as sad as that. Some of it was just plain silly, like the segment about the guy who paid women to throw pies at him. I don't think these shows are as common as they used to be. Court shows started taking over, and I don't know what's on in these time slots now.

"Get Over It" was a sensation. A woman posted online that her pastor began including the song in his sermons. In the years after the song came out, I applied the song to a variety of situations - especially when people dwelled on stupid shit.

It was also invoked following one of my great literary projects. I had a book published through an indie publisher about how I was harassed by school officials and students who they deputized. When the volume appeared on Amazon, someone I went to school with gave it multiple bad reviews, even alluding to events that weren't mentioned in the book or were made up completely. That these reviews were posted proved that the whole premise of the book was true - namely, that schools harass anyone who crosses them. In reply to the bad reviews, somebody made a post under the name Don Henley consisting of the entire lyrics of "Get Over It."

The song was well-suited for that. Some idiot was talking shit over something that had happened 25 years earlier, and wouldn't get over it.

"Get Over It" is a song for all occasions!

"Go Insane" by Lindsey Buckingham

1984 / #23

Rate Your Music score: 3.52 out of 5!

In the mid-1980s, music-related media even had an influence on Dungeons & Dragons!

"Go Insane" is part of a group of lost hits from that time - such as "Are We Ourselves?" by the Fixx and "Along Comes A Woman" by Chicago - that tried to sound like Devo, even though Devo was past their peak by then. That time frame also represented a confluence of music videos, Atari BASIC, and Dungeons & Dragons.

We came up with a list of 100 curses to use in a Dungeons & Dragons session. They were numbered from 00 to 99 and were randomly determined by rolling the 10-sided dice twice. These curses could be cast on an adversary.

This was all fantasy, of course. It was only a game. Nothing real about it. You put the dice and books away, and it was gone.

The curses grew increasingly ridiculous as you went down the list. Curse #48 made a 10-foot-tall Sesame Street sign grow out of a person's head - because Channel 48 is one of our local PBS stations. Curse #57 made Heinz 57 sauce constantly shoot out the person's ears. My personal favorite curse was "arms control selves."

After seeing Lindsey Buckingham's "Go Insane" video, I came up with a curse for this list: The person's head would turn into a globe and spin endlessly - just as in the video. Best all, it would take place in public, for maximum humiliation. Not to be outdone, another curse was added in which the person's head would turn into a replica of the Liberty Bell.

"Go Insane" also had a link with my interest in computer programming. I remember a story on American Top 40 in which it was reported that the music for this track was stored on a floppy disk.

"Go Insane" may well be the mid-'80s manifest!

"Press" by Paul McCartney

1986 / #21

Rate Your Music score: 3.26 out of 5!

"Oklahoma was never like this..."

What the hell did Paul mean when he sang, "Oklahoma was never like this"?

This isn't a misheard lyric. Those are the actual words!

This ranks right up there with Billy Joel's "We had no Softsoap." But at least we knew what Billy was singing about, even if it was a ridiculous thing to worry about. I have no idea what Paul's reference to our 46th state is about. I remember radio DJ's making fun of it back in 1986.

Maybe he wasn't singing about the state of Oklahoma but rather a neighborhood in my area that was gentrified after a local newspaper spread a rumor that residents were eating horses. An online comment says the line is actually about the musical Oklahoma!, but that would make even less sense.

Then there's the video. The "Press" video was filmed on the London subway. Unlike TANK, the London subway actually went somewhere, so people actually used it. Paul picks his nose at 1:35. The woman at 2:48 acts as if somebody just let loose with a big, stinky fart.

It's a shame Paul didn't film this video on a TANK bus instead. So few people use TANK that he wouldn't have been bothered much. The few people using it would have been busy brawling among themselves, throwing cans out the window, or grabbing used wads of bubble gum off the floor.

"China" by the Red Rockers

1983 / #53

Rate Your Music score: 3.46 out of 5!

Before this lost hit by this New Orleans band came out, most information I had about China - and other countries - came from old cartoons and was full of misunderstandings. These days, we have to contend with American news outlets that have partnerships with Chinese state media or have capital projects in China, and the false ideas of today are different from those of old.

At the time of the Red Rockers' hit, what interest I had in China was fueled by the antiquated misconceptions I had. I was only 10. But most of this entry is not about a country. It's about yet another personal anecdote.

One evening back in 1983, Men At Work's Colin Hay appeared on MTV as a guest VJ. During that hour, Colin conducted a brief interview of members of the Red Rockers...

Now, the thing about this is that I considered Men At Work to be the greatest band in existence. In fact, I thought they were the greatest anything in existence! Nothing in the history of the universe had ever been better. So I waited all week to watch Colin's MTV appearance.

I started watching it, but after a few minutes, my mom decided that my behavior was too unruly to be permitted to continue. So I wasn't allowed watching the rest of it.

That story has a connection to China. A couple years later, Men At Work planned on giving concerts in China. But the Chinese government scuttled this plan, saying that another act from the Western world - namely Wham! - had destroyed the morals of the country's youth by performing there. It was as if the Chinese government had its own PMRC. Or maybe the PMRC had its own authoritarian government. Or maybe it was both.

"Dancing In The City" by Marshall Hain

1978 / #43

Rate Your Music score: 3.15 out of 5!

At the age of 12 or 13, around 1985-86, one of my goals was to see the inner workings of a radio station. Not the big stations where the studio was occasionally seen on the news if there was some story involving them. I'm talking about the smaller stations like WCLU.

I wanted to figure out why their records skipped so damn much - when their turntables worked at all. I was listening one day when one of their turntables actually broke. Until "turntable #2" was fixed, they had to pipe in music from a mobile studio they had. It was an amazing listen!

The closest I ever got to the station was just before signoff one evening when we drove back behind Latonia Plaza and saw their building resting forlornly in a field. Many years later, I actually saw photos of the inside of the studio posted online - complete with format clock and David Lee Roth poster.

But when I was 12, I could only imagine what the studio looked like. Phil Collins's "Don't Lose My Number" and Sade's "The Sweetest Taboo" filled the den as the signal creepily braved our gray sky, but I had to paint a mental image of the studio.

My image of WCLU fumbling with its equipment dredged up an incident I had in the back of my mind. It might not have even taken place. It might have just been the power of suggestion. I recalled that I had a record that my parents confiscated because I listened to it too much. According to this narrative, they hid it atop the kitchen cabinet. But by the time I was 12, there was no record there.

Years later, I recalled that the record may have been "Dancing In The City" by the English duo Marshall Hain. But - even if a record was indeed confiscated - I'm not even sure it was this. Again, this could be the power of suggestion. This song didn't get that much play locally - in fact, it got very little - so why would anyone in the family think to buy it?

Let me reiterate that it's possible that the seized record was something else - or that the incident didn't take place at all, and no record was ever confiscated. If so, I don't know why I recalled such an episode. I have clear memories of some real events that others deny, but this recollection is fuzzy.

It may be the power of suggestion manifest!

"Almost Over You" by Sheena Easton

1983 / #25

Rate Your Music score: 2.84 out of 5!

"When you come back around...After painting the town...You'll see I'm almost over you..."

I warned you that there was more adult contemporary balladry coming, and you didn't believe me, did you?

Sheena Easton wasn't always known for funky stuff like "Sugar Walls." Earlier in her career, she slogged along on MOR radio everywhere. That lasted into the era in which I wrote crude Sesame Street fanfic.

For months - maybe a year - I had an elaborate storyline which I titled "The Winds Of Sesame Street." This gave us ridiculous scenarios such as Big Bird's tail getting amputated and being found floating in outer space. In this storyline, Bert was afraid of Oscar the Grouch, so Ernie hung a portrait of Oscar above Bert's bed to scare him. This fanfic exercise even drew in characters from outside the Sesame Street universe. For example, He-Man appeared and was somehow chopped up into small pieces and put back together with Scotch tape. The Quaker Oats man also showed up at some point.

That was also around the time I made up song titles like "Groverkill" and "Do You Really Want To Bert Me." A line in "Puttin' On The Ritz" was parodied as, "Tryin' hard to look like Mr. Hooper."

When Sheena released "Almost Over You", you could see right where things were headed. You guessed it! I called it "Almost Grover You."

Wait! There's more! As an ode to Sesame Street's Number Painter character - the man with suspenders and a derby hat who appeared in a series of segments in which he painted numbers on things - I made a parody of the song's chorus: "When you come back around...After Number Painting the town...You'll see I'm almost Grover you."

All of this was back when Sesame Street was still good - long before its disastrous 51st season.

Not long after all of this, Sheena realized that the next few years would not be quite as friendly to the type of adult contemporary that had filled the airwaves in the early '80s. This was much to the PMRC's chagrin.

"Lies" by the Thompson Twins

1983 / #30

Rate Your Music score: 3.25 out of 5!

"Promises are snapped in two...And words are made to bend..."

The Thompson Twins. Discuss.

"Lies" made the top 40, but I didn't hear it that much. I remember hearing it in my parents' Horizon as we tooled down the street though. But it was the video that really grabbed my attention.

I saw the video one day, and I burst out laughing! The funniest part was the Thompsons' faces flying toward the viewer as they sang the chorus. To show you how much influence music-related media had at the time, the feet moving in the foreground also inspired a school photography project.

"Lies" has rarely been heard since. That's what this lost hits blog is all about. But the song's influence just won't go away! Only a few years ago, my zine was going strong with its unbeatable formula that relied heavily on funny stories about people breaking or ruining their eyeglasses - usually on purpose. One 2017 vignette was about how a woman on a parenting blog said her daughter kept breaking her own glasses at least once per week - usually by poking the lenses out. But the daughter came up with a new strategy of grabbing the glasses by each arm and tearing them off.

The title of this piece was "Glasses are snapped in two...And words are made to bend..."

And that's no lie!

"Me Myself And I" by De La Soul

1989 / #34

Rate Your Music score: 3.92 out of 5!

I'm giving this lost hit an entry to show how we focus on singles rather than albums.

You may know that - whenever possible - I buyed actual records instead of cassettes or CD's. Good records had better sound quality - and were cheaper than CD's. You could have your cake and eat it too! I continued with this until you could buy MP3's instead. I think the last new 45 that I purchased had to have been in the mid-1990s, maybe later.

Also - whether it was a record, tape, or CD - I usually buyed singles instead of albums. Sometimes the album version of a track was better than the single mix, but this was hit-or-miss. I usually purchased the single because singles represented excitement. Some of the best music had brevity. I didn't buy music so I could analyze it.

For some acts, such as Men At Work or "Weird Al" Yankovic, we'd buy the album. But for most other performers - even some of the greats - we got the single.

From its inception until 1998, the Hot 100 was a singles chart. There was a time in its early years when the chart included a few EP's too, but that didn't last past the 1960s. Only since 1998 has the chart included LP-only cuts. But apparently, even before 1998, a single would occasionally chart even if a commercial single was not available.

That's where "Me Myself And I" comes in.

When this record appeared on American Top 40, host Shadoe Stevens said it was the first item to reach the top 40 that was not available as a commercial single. I'm not sure under what rule it charted. Was there a promotional single for radio stations? There had been a few songs that famously did not chart because they were not released as commercial singles, but I know there were promo 45's for some.

In a later AT40 installment, Shadoe corrected this information, saying "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang from a decade earlier was actually the first item to reach the top 40 without being sold as a commercial single. But Wikipedia says there were 7-inch pressings of this hit that are "very rare." "Rapper's Delight" was also known for the brilliant line, "I can bust you out with my super sperm."

In the 1990s, many big hits were sold as a cassette single or CD single, but not as a single record. These were still eligible to appear on the Hot 100, because there was some type of single. But the era saw many big songs excluded from the Hot 100 because they didn't have a single at all.

Long live the single!

"Don't Let Go" by Wang Chung

1984 / #38

Rate Your Music score: 3.46 out of 5!

I profiled Wang Chung once before for their lost hit "Hypnotize Me." But it really is amazing how much their minor hit "Don't Let Go" - their first chart hit ever - essentially ruled the roost for about a year in the mid-1980s, even after it faded from radio and MTV.

I'm not even sure why or how. It just did. It's as if that record just takes that time frame and smashes it right in your face. I actually remember discussing this song with someone, maybe some neighborhood pals who stopped by. I don't even recall why.

Many events of the era were somehow linked to the musical culture of the day, and "Don't Let Go" appeared to be at the heart of it all. This song was the standard by which everything else was judged. It represented an environment that sort of bobbed along for a while, died down, and resurfaced a couple more times in the ensuing decades.

In more recent years, current popular music hasn't had nearly as much influence on our society, while other media have. I had a blast in the 2010s, as I went to rallies and participated in community projects (which were quickly swatted down in the 2020s). But if you look at a Hot 100 chart from the 2010s, you'll see very little music that you ever remember hearing. Even #1 hits aren't remembered. Yet a #38 hit from 1984 is still fondly recalled even after it's been off the airwaves for 41 years.

Another amusing note about Wang Chung: "Don't Let Go" came from their album Points On The Curve, a disc that prompted a hilarious review by the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Inquirer charged that Wang Chung were "mean-spirited fops." I burst out laughing when I found this, because Wang Chung always seemed like the ultimate nice guys, and it's hard to imagine them as "mean-spirited."

"Highwire" by the Rolling Stones

1991 / #57

Rate Your Music score: 3.3 out of 5!

This song sounds like a big hit, and maybe it would have been one if not for the radio industry's political intolerance.

"Highwire" came out around the end of the disastrous 1991 Gulf War. The Stones' Keith Richards said the song was "about how you build up some shaky dictator" just to "slam them down." The song criticized the politics behind the start of the war.

The tune's antiwar stance caused it to be banned by radio stations in Salt Lake City and St. Louis. This was while radio played songs that they linked to favorable views of the war. A station in Albany, New York, even collected congratulatory letters to send to George H.W. Bush for how he carried out the conflict.

I heard the song precisely once on Cincinnati radio - as we were in the car in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant - and it's a miracle our stations played it even that much, considering how stodgy and conservative our top-rated stations already were. You can bet your bottom dollar that after the song aired once on local radio, the suits slapped it down lickety-split. But the record apparently saw more play in smaller cities, so it actually made the Gavin Report's top 40.

The ban of this record was like having the 2020s in the 1990s!

"Right Here And Now" by Bill Medley

1982 / #58

Rate Your Music score: 2.62 out of 5!

I didn't set out to do a blog full of adult contemporary ballads, but when a performer strongly resembles your high school principal, you just can't help it.

Bill Medley is best known as a member of the Righteous Brothers and for his chart-topping duet with Jennifer Warnes "(I've Had) The Time Of My Life." I heard "Right Here And Now" on the radio quite a bit back in 1982, but it was 5 years later when Bill and Jennifer's duet was a hit that Bill's resemblance to my principal was first noted.

I started high school right when "The Time Of My Life" came out. What great timing! One day, we were watching TV at home, and that video came on. A family member noted that Bill looked quite a bit like the headmaster of my school. All he needed was a pair of tinted eyeglasses.

Incidentally, my principal was a titanically incompetent clown, and was one of the worst people I've ever had the misfortune of meeting. I was forced to put up with him for almost 3 years.

Because Bill Medley looked like my principal, this blog wouldn't be complete without him. But I damn sure wasn't going to include "The Time Of My Life", because after all, this blog is for lost hits. If you don't understand why "The Time Of My Life" doesn't belong on a lost hits blog, ask an adult.

"It Must Be Love" by Madness

1983 / #33

Rate Your Music score: 3.62 out of 5!

Madness madness was going strong in 1983! You may know this London band for their smash hit "Our House", but they had this chart entry too.

I heard "It Must Be Love" a little bit on the radio, but I only saw the video once on MTV, and missed most of it. I think I was busy letting the dog outside or sweeping potato chip crumbs off the kitchen floor. So I had little memory of what appeared in the video.

Perhaps 25 years later, I heard a rumor that there was a video on MTV around that time that featured Big Bird falling from the sky and landing on a band. If I had seen Big Bird in a music video in late 1983, I surely would have remembered. That was at the height of my stage of writing tasteless Sesame Street fanfic and threatening to start watching Sesame Street again if my cartoons kept getting preempted.

It turned out the video in question was this one. The clip clearly shows Madness vocalist Graham "Suggs" McPherson catching Big Bird as he falls into his arms. It wasn't one of the Big Birds actually used on Sesame Street, but it was clearly intended to be Big Bird.

A YouTube commenter said of the video, "I noticed four dangerous stunts: running in front of a moving car, playing an electric guitar under water, a back flip into a pool, and Big Bird jumping into the man's arms."

This might not be the only mid-'80s lost hit that had a video with a Big Bird connection, so keep your beak peeled!

"High On Emotion" by Chris de Burgh

1984 / #44

Rate Your Music score: 3.06 out of 5!

I've always thought of Chris de Burgh as being one of these guys like Phil Collins who has this everyman image that people think is strangely funny.

The top 40 stations in Cincinnati seemed to be unusually fast on adding anything Chris put out. I remember listening to American Top 40 and being surprised to hear that "Don't Pay The Ferryman" - now a lost hit itself - was only in the 30s and still climbing the chart. Judging by radio play back then, I would have thought it was a chart-topping smash that had run its course by then.

"High On Emotion" made it to our biggest top 40 station pretty quickly even though this same station was slow at adding most other new music. The video got a lot of play too, and it was noted that members of Chris's band bore strong resemblances to other famous people - David Bowie and Paul McCartney among them.

And Chris looked like Dr. Shrinker, the title character of one of the 1970s Saturday morning shows created by Sid and Marty Krofft.

This isn't the only such link between popular music and a Krofft show, as Carly Rae Jepsen has been said to strongly resemble Dyna Girl.

And how come you never see people wearing those shirts that say "Bah!" anymore?

"Why Me?" by Planet P Project

1983 / #64

Rate Your Music score: 3.51 out of 5!

This is a song that everyone insists does not exist - even after having the evidence shoved right in their face.

Planet P Project was like a one-man band. It was actually a pseudonym of Tony Carey - who has had several lost hits under his real name. It appears as if some other musicians did work with Tony, but Wikipedia suggests the name Planet P Project refers to Tony himself.

Radio stations in Cincinnati aren't exactly known for making the best choices as to what music to play, but this is one they got right. This record only got to #64, but both top 40 stations in Cincinnati at the time regularly played it, and it was apparently big on our album rock stations too. This was a better choice than some of the others that have been made, despite the record's low chart peak.

But when it was gone, it was gone.

I mentioned this song sometime later, and everyone insisted I made it up. It was like they couldn't remember anything that happened more than a few months earlier. For years, I would mention this song, and they would still deny it ever existed.

Finally, maybe around 1992, I found a 45 of it. I played it for them, and they still insisted it wasn't real!

What did they think it was? Did they think I just put one of our record-shaped beverage coasters on the turntable and played instruments and sang along with it?

It's real! Cope!

At least the cast of Sesame Street knew Mr. Snuffleupagus was real when they finally saw him. But in this crazy world we call real life, sometimes solid proof isn't enough.

I didn't post the video above. That's from someone who had a much bigger 45 collection than I have. The single version posted above is the mix that everyone was familiar with - before they began denying it existed. The song had a video too, but it used a vastly different mix...

Although the single version was better known in 1983, I need to handle my 45 with care, because that mix is so rare today. The rarity of that version is also one of the reasons I keep records instead of relying on YouTube.

Just a few years ago, everyone insisted Toby Beau wasn't real, and that I made them up. But we can count on YouTube to embarrass musical naysayers!

"Get Used To It" by Roger Voudouris

1979 / #21

Rate Your Music score: 3.14 out of 5!

If you hadn't seen the year listed above, what year would you guess this lost hit was from? 1987?

This record sounds quaint today, but it was considered way ahead of its time in 1979. It was popular during the summer I turned 6, and back then, I thought the beginning of this song was like nothing I'd ever heard before.

The only context I ever remember hearing this song though was through an external speaker we set up on the back porch. We had a Magnavox console stereo with an AM/FM receiver from circa 1972 in the living room. For years, I think it was the only radio we had with FM, except for a transistor radio that later got broken when the dog knocked it off the kitchen table. Somehow, we ran a wire from the stereo all the way to the back porch.

I don't even remember where the wire went. We might have run it up through the living room closet and through an "attic" that supposedly existed, but which I never saw.

This was also in the days when radio DJ's used to tell listeners, "Don't touch that radio!" How was a DJ supposed to know if I touched the radio? I once tested this admonition by fiddling with the bass, treble, and balance knobs on the stereo. The DJ didn't come to my house and beat me up.

In the 1980s, we moved the external speaker into the den - yet hardly ever used it anymore. The only time I remember the speaker being on in the den was one day when I got into a famous sibling squabble. My mom tried to make us behave by putting the stereo on some weird station and blasting it in the den. It's like how stores blare the same music nonstop to chase away loiterers (while not caring what nearby residents think), or when Sesame Street songs were played for days at a time to torture Guantanamo Bay inmates.

Playing the same music over and over as a torture technique is actually what radio stations today do. In contrast to this, this lost hits blog commemorates music we never get to hear anymore.

"Forever In Blue Jeans" by Neil Diamond

1979 / #20

Rate Your Music score: 2.97 out of 5!

"Money talks...But it don't sing and dance and it don't walk..."

Time to grow those sideburns!

For a song you never hear anymore, this lost hit sure is memorable. The opening lines have been repeated fondly many times over the past 46 years. It's not because of the image these lyrics bring to mind when taken literally, but because these words have a very important meaning.

And what is this song's meaning? I once read an article that said it was about how you don't need fame, money, and glitz to get satisfaction in life. The piece said it was a message against wastefulness, greed, and flaunting wealth. It sounds like a good anthem against capitalist excess. You don't need gold-plated tennis balls or marble toilets. You can be happy just living in harmony with your surroundings.

Sure, our rulers have made it harder to do - even as everyone gets poorer and poorer - but it brings the satisfaction that we have a right to expect from life.

People who have seen Neil Diamond in concert say this song brings the best audience reaction out of all of his many tunes.

Of course, no song has a constitutional right to be free from parody. Apparently, a local radio station made a parody of this record titled "Forever In Beer Cans." I don't remember if it was anything like "Pee-Pee Song." When I was about 8, I compiled a personal ranking of favorite songs I heard on the radio, and one of them was "Pee-Pee Song." I didn't find the list again until years later. I think "Pee-Pee Song" was a parody of "No No Song." If I remember correctly, this parody went, "No no no no, I don't pee-pee no more...I'm tired of it landing on the floor."

We'd do OK forever in beer cans.

"Money Changes Everything" by Cyndi Lauper

1984 / #27

Rate Your Music score: 3.57 out of 5!

"It's all in the past now...Money changes everything..."

One of the most misused statements in the entire English language is, "It's all in the past now."

If you rightly complain about some mistreatment you got only a day ago, someone will inevitably shrug it off, saying, "It's all in the past now." It's this dismissive attitude that ensures a complete lack of accountability for atrocities of all sorts. These days, those who maliciously do wrong not only evade punishment but are actually elevated to even more powerful positions.

Meanwhile, my adversaries went on and on about the same shit for 35 years. Considering their record, I don't think they're done yet. They've just been distracted by new powers they've been given over the past few years. This feud of theirs lasted longer than the Hatfields and McCoys. Get over it! (Relax, we'll get to that one.)

The lost hits profiled on this blog seem to be all in the past now, but most actually do turn up in some venue once in a great while - just not in regular rotation on traditional radio. Yet it's not quite like it was 30 years ago when you couldn't hear lost hits anymore unless by some chance you had the record. I'm pretty sure "Money Changes Everything" turned up on Sirius XM's '80s channel a few years ago, and that I have a video from a road trip in which it happened to be playing in the background in the car. But this record never appears anymore on regular radio that you don't have to pay for. Money changes everything!

"When The Lights Go Out" by Naked Eyes

1983 / #37

Rate Your Music score: 3.66 out of 5!

Shh! Naked!

This lost hit was a memorable one, but I'm giving it an entry for one reason and one reason only. It's because the singer in this band tried to sound like Paul McCartney!

In fact, the first time I heard this song, I actually thought it was Paul. I was 10, and I had just gotten a new bedroom, which was tiny. I had the clock radio on - back when clock radios were actually easy to use. This song came on.

And I thought it was Paul McCartney!

That was back in the days when Paul kept doing ridiculous duets with Michael Jackson. After all, lots of performers had goofy duets back then. But I was surprised there'd be a new Paul McCartney single coming out so soon after "Say Say Say." I was even more surprised to discover it wasn't Paul, but Naked Eyes.

Naked Eyes were best known for their version of "Always Something There To Remind Me", a well-known song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. I recalled that a few months earlier, Marilyn McCoo performed that song on Solid Gold. I burst out laughing because of the spacey keyboard in the chorus. Fast-forward to 19:30...

Also, around 1983-84, there was a lot of fine music I didn't appreciate then. Much of this was because of some personal experiences I had during the preceding couple years that just stuck in my craw. I also fretted that Men At Work were being unfairly prevented from charting higher. But, along with 1978-79, that era actually had some of the best music ever.

I started appreciating music more in 1984, thinking much of it was strangely funny or some sort of spectacle. For a long time, I couldn't figure out why, but someone told me it must have been because there were so many goofy videos on MTV then. Much of popular culture was built around music videos, and it emerged in weird ways.

It just goes to show the influence of mass media!

"Help Is On Its Way" by Little River Band

1977 / #14

Rate Your Music score: 3.31 out of 5!

That late 1970s strum is the sound of excitement!

This record - like "Lowdown" by Boz Scaggs - has what sounds like a strum of a bass every few seconds. I've always thought that this characteristic late '70s strum was evocative of the progress associated with a road construction zone and how we'd soon get to enjoy a faster, smoother, more efficient ride.

Imagine riding down a city street with "Help Is On Its Way" or "Lowdown" blaring on the AM radio and seeing construction crews working in the breeze! The smell of summer fills the air, and bulldozers loom on a grassy lot between some fine old apartment buildings. You're informed that there's a new road being built, and you just can't wait to see it!

Those were highlights of my young life!

At a very young age, I developed a keen interest in road transport. Much of this was because of the boom in local road projects in the '70s. I even had a favorite road: Lourdes Lane in Newport. When I was about 4, I actually drew a map of the surrounding area on a paper grocery bag.

But it all came crashing down not long after. The word progress sometimes defies its own meaning. We were in the car heading to Rink's when we noticed Lourdes Lane had been completely torn down. The construction vehicles that we had been seeing there for months weren't to improve my favorite road, but to demolish it. My favorite road was gone, never to return!

Little River Band formed in Melbourne, Australia, but American Top 40 once reported that they were the group whose members hailed from the most different countries. Wikipedia says they've had members born in Australia, the Netherlands, England, Italy, New Zealand, the United States, and perhaps elsewhere. The band has also had numerous lineup changes over its half-century in existence. The group has included a caption with some of its videos on YouTube that warns...

"Unfortunately, the Little River Band that tours the United States today contains NO ORIGINAL MEMBERS. Be aware that they often use our videos, images and audio to mislead the public into believing original members will be appearing. This American band owns the trademark 'Little River Band' and this prevents the original band from performing or touring."

Time for a cool change!

"Goodnight Saigon" by Billy Joel

1983 / #56

Rate Your Music score: 3.52 out of 5!

"We had no Softsoap..."

"Goodnight Saigon" is a song about the Vietnam War - more specifically about Marines who fought in that conflict.

Many critics and musicians liked the song. Garth Brooks said it was his favorite Billy Joel song. But others disagreed. Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh said it was "obscenity" that the song "refuses to take sides" on the war.

Other critics couldn't look past one particular line in the song: "We had no Softsoap."

You heard that right. "We had no Softsoap."

I've always been as flabbergasted at that line as you are. That's not a misheard line. That's the real lyrics.

I used to hear this song when I was about 10, and I was always afraid I'd have to fight in a war, because there would be no Softsoap. Some said that line completely undercut the rest of the song and its assessment of the war.

The "Goodnight Saigon" clip posted above is the album version that people are more familiar with. The song also had a popular video, which appears to have instead been recorded at one of Billy's concerts...

That was back when Billy always wore a bandage on his left thumb. Several articles suggest this was because a recent motorcycle crash had left him with no bone in the tip of his finger.

I also once read that Billy would shred newspapers on stage if a critic at the paper gave him a bad review.

Billy Joel. The man, the myth, the legend!

"Fallen Angel" by Poison

1988 / #12

Rate Your Music score: 3.28 out of 5!

"Algebra books out into the city streets..."

Ready for another misheard lyric?

When you attend a terrible high school, it's sure to inspire misheard words to songs. It even influences how correct lyrics are perceived, as the situation at school can be so unhealthy that your mind wanders just seeing and hearing everyday things. I can't even begin to tell you how incompetent some of our school officials were. To be fair, I wouldn't say it was like having the 2020s in the 1980s. Nothing was that bad until the 2020s. But my high school modeled the fascism that others later built upon.

This school taught me that there's algebra books out in the city streets. I mean that literally. I had repeated altercations with one student in particular who kept destroying my textbooks. I think he even threw my algebra book out into a city street. I know he stuck bubble gum in my science book, and he threw one of my books in a mud puddle. One time I got in a fight with him, and he tried making me pay for his broken glasses. The problem with this was that he never wore glasses.

When I first heard "Fallen Angel" blasting over the boom box in my den, the very first line caught my ear. Why, it was about "algebra books out into the city streets"! I felt I could relate to the song because it was about school textbooks getting ruined. But this line was misheard. The song actually says, "She stepped off the bus out into the city streets."

I'm not exactly sure what context I first heard the song in. I was thinking it was when Power 94½ began playing it, but it might have been the radio show Joel Denver's Future Hits, which aired in many cities. I'm not even sure what station we heard Joel on, but it might have been Power 94½. Around the same time, there was also a live call-in show that aired on Sunday nights. This show interviewed big music stars of the era. I know there was a show that had a host named Shadow P. Stevens - not to be confused with Shadoe Stevens of American Top 40.

Those shows aired pretty late at night, so I must have only heard them in the summer, when I wasn't forced to wake up at 6 AM to attend a shitty school.

"Hypnotize Me" by Wang Chung

1987 / #36

Rate Your Music score: 3.41 out of 5!

"Turn on your Lite-Brite..."

Turn on your Lite-Brite! Go ahead! Turn it on!

I considered Wang Chung to be central to the musical and societal happenings of the mid-1980s. Their presence on our TV screens just screamed mid-'80s. But they haven't reached the top 40 since 1987, when they gave us this memorable lost hit.

And remember it we shall.

When I was 14, we went on a great family vacation to Iowa. As we were scooting across the Illinois prairie on Interstate 74, I heard "Hypnotize Me" on the car radio. The chorus commanded, "Turn on your white light." Being the musical genius that I am, I immediately came up with new lyrics: "Turn on your Lite-Brite."

This was reminiscent of an early 1980s commercial for Del Monte canned peaches, to which I intoned, "Come on over to the Lite-Brite"...

Del Monte went on to sell a grand total of about 3 cans of its "lite" variant. It had to be a tax write-off.

In 2007, a marketing campaign in Boston used electric signs similar to Lite-Brites. Local authorities were afraid of Lite-Brites and cracked down hard, saying the signs were actually bombs. The incident is still known as the Boston Mooninite panic.

Eek! Lite-Brites!

"This Is Not America" by David Bowie/Pat Metheny Group

1985 / #32

Rate Your Music score: 3.65 out of 5!

For a song that's almost never been played in 40 years, everything about this lost hit is memorable. It has sort of a dark tone and a dark title. The video consists of clips from the movie The Falcon And The Snowman, and I'll always associate the song with the scene of a character from the film screaming at 3:12. Even hearing this song on the radio was memorable. I recall pondering it as it was on the car radio as we pulled into the driveway on the way home from the grocery store.

I continued to be influenced by the very title. When I was in my late teens in the early 1990s, I planned to write a book titled This Is Not America exposing how local school officials and politicians were running an organized crime racket, and how they were retaliating against young people who fought back. They continue to do it. This Is Not America was a good title, because they kept violating liberties guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. Someone dismissed my proposed book as "a left-wing complaint", but didn't actually deny any of it was true. Everyone knew it was true, but I was supposed to be quiet. It was the same wimpy, dismissive attitude now being displayed regarding the lockdown atrocities of the past few years.

Parts of this concept exist in bits and pieces in my later projects. I wish I could gather together all of that project, but it's on a disk for an Atari 800. I find it interesting that the home computing industry kept introducing new computers and standards that were incompatible with older machines, which relegated past events to the memory hole.

I've had to work harder at my projects since then, because more and more things have happened that are obviously idiotic. Things have gotten more ridiculous and stupid all the time.

My proposed book opened, "America is fast becoming a police state." A few people back then scoffed at this warning, but how did that turn out?

This is not America! I don't know what it is, but it sure as shit ain't America.

"I.G.Y. (What A Beautiful World)" by Donald Fagen

1982 / #26

Rate Your Music score: 3.9 out of 5!

"What a beautiful world this will be...What a glorious time to be free..."

Don't confuse "I.G.Y." with IGA or an IGO or a UGO.

This snappy lost hit by Steely Dan's Donald Fagen is one of a handful of songs I remember being popular around the time I wasted my brother's pink construction paper by drawing a stupid picture of a guy blowing a bubble. But that's not why it gets an entry here.

When I was 9, people developed a habit of wiping boogers on the wall and furniture at home. When a blob of mucus was found on a wall, it might be called an IGO - identified gross object. I also recall a UGO - unidentified gross object - stuck on a particular spot on the bedroom wall. It was right where you entered the room, below a styrofoam mock-up of one of those traffic signs that said "BUMP." Nobody knew what the hell it was. Sometimes those were produced when you got a piece of food stuck between your teeth and you spit it out in a projectile fashion.

After IGO's began filling our walls, "I.G.Y." began filling our airwaves. What does the title of the song stand for? It stands for International Geophysical Year - a period that ran from July 1957 through December 1958.

What was the song actually about? Although it was a hit in 1982, the topic seems tailor-made for the 2020s. I read an article a few years ago that said the song was about scientific arrogance. It was about scientists having unrealistic ideas and trying to impose them on everyone despite being at odds with objective facts. This inspired lines like, "90 minutes from New York to Paris." It was like "I am the science."

The International Geophysical Year itself seemed to defy objective facts. The event defined a "year" as being 18 months, like we're on Mars or something. It's like how the CIA just invents new oceans or how The View insisted the square root of 2 is a rational number.

What a glorious time to be - oh, wait.

"Someone Could Lose A Heart Tonight" by Eddie Rabbitt

1981 / #15

Rate Your Music score: 3.22 out of 5!

Back in 1981-82, this lost hit brang amusement to 3rd graders far and wide.

Each day, kids at school would sit there in class and sing this song with new lyrics. They called it "Someone Could Throw A Dart Tonight."

Wait, no, that wasn't it. I think it was "Someone Could Wreck A Cart Tonight." Or maybe it was "Someone Could Eat A Tart Tonight." Yeah, that was it!

For reference, this record was a hit right at the same time as "Harden My Heart" by Quarterflash. There was a kid in one of my classes who was about 5 years older than everyone else who sat there in class singing new lyrics for that song: "I'm gonna farten my fart...I'm gonna swallow my beer." He also came up with new lyrics for the Christmas song "Silver Bells": "Silver bells...Your momma smells."

Years after his heyday, Eddie Rabbitt went on a crusade against rap lyrics. In 1992, he wrote a letter to Billboard in which he groaned, "Are we becoming a nation that is just too cool to care?" On a 1991 album, Eddie included a song called "C-Rap (Country Rap)", which protested against "dirty talking on the radio"...

Silly Rabbitt!

"Into You" by Giant Steps

1989 / #58

Rate Your Music score: 2.92 out of 5!

This is the third and final entry of the Salmonella Three - 3 lost hits that ruled the radio during my bout with salmonella.

I always confused Giant Steps with Times Two, even though Giant Steps' vocals sounded more like Scritti Politti. And, unlike Times Two, Giant Steps appeared on A&M Records. And trust me, anyone who has ever come across their 45's knows this.

A&M did not always use the sturdiest material to press its records. By the late 1980s, its singles were on such cheap styrene that they're practically transparent if examined in a certain light. It's like the clandestine Soviet records that were pressed on x-ray sheets. And they last about as many plays before they start to sound fuzzy.

A&M's Herb Alpert blamed radio stations for wearing out promotional copies of records, yet much of that was because A&M used such flimsy material. But when you're talking about the singles sold in record stores, perhaps more blame rests with companies like Panasonic that sold turntables that had a stylus that seemed specifically designed to wear down styrene 45's. Record collecting websites have tried letting the world know about Panasonic's swindle.

A website comment says styrene records were "'cue-it-once' items" at radio stations. This meant you should only cue it up once before copying it to cartridge. The second try would leave a scratching sound at the beginning of the brand new record.

Years after Giant Steps mania - and before record collecting became gentrified - folks on the public Internet searched in earnest for the duo's old singles. They expressed extreme constipation that every copy they found sounded scratchy.

But even today, old lost hits still sometimes spin away on turntables in home offices far and wide.

"It's Only Love" by Simply Red

1989 / #57

Rate Your Music score: 3.16 out of 5!

This is the second entry of the Salmonella Three - so named because these 3 entries are for songs that dominated the airwaves while I had salmonella.

Simply Red had a couple songs that were already lost hits by the time "It's Only Love" came out. When those songs fell off the charts, that was it for those songs. With major radio stations becoming increasingly conservative, that was likely because of controversy surrounding them - though these controversies were actually pretty mild. I heard "It's Only Love" much more than I ever heard the band's two earlier lost hits - even though the others charted much higher.

Perhaps radio played it more to atone for not playing the others anymore. But it too was gone rather quickly.

The hairstyle sported by Simply Red's Mick Hucknall was not unique. Check out this old scare film about a little girl who ruins everything she borrows, including library books and other people's records...

This entry might not be the last of Simply Red that we see on this blog.

"Driven Out" by the Fixx

1989 / #55

Rate Your Music score: 3.51 out of 5!

This is the first of a series of entries I call the Salmonella Three.

Each of these 3 records charted in early 1989 and peaked in the 50s on the Hot 100. All 3 are by acts from England. I call these entries the Salmonella Three because they were on the airwaves when I had salmonella when I was a high school sophomore. This bout with salmonella ruined entirely my George Washington Weekend. I think I also missed about 5 days of school, which was about 185 fewer than I wish I had missed that year.

These days, they close down schools for 2 years over a handful of COVID cases, but in 1989, these same officials took the opposite approach for other illnesses. That extreme is bad too. Thanks to their doublethink, they have absolutely no credibility whatsoever. But county officials made a rare foray into science when they correctly attributed this salmonella outbreak to contaminated drinking water. Usually, they just blame the "drought" when our water tastes weird - even if it's been raining nonstop. But putting the blame where it belongs can't bring back my George Washington Weekend.

"Driven Out" was a hit at the time. For a long time, I've confused it with another lost hit: "Cuts You Up" by Peter Murphy, which coincidentally also peaked at #55. But the words to "Driven Out" seem to be about alienation, a phenomenon that has only heightened in the decades since. If only we could have our free spaces of the 2010s back, but those have been driven out by the bottomless fascism of the 2020s. Thanks a million, media.

Not everyone appreciated the apparent message of "Driven Out." Some folks were defined by their immaturity, and they used the song as a basis for an X-rated joke. They recycled this joke from one inspired by a radio commercial for a new McDonald's location.

Another thing I remember about having salmonella was that there was one evening when someone kept ripping silent-but-deadly bunker blasts and stinking up the living room while I was laying down. It was lovely.

I'm surprised people weren't driven out of the living room!

"Funky, Funky Xmas" by New Kids On The Block

Did not chart

I don't usually give entries to tracks that did not make the Hot 100, but this one was so idiotic that I couldn't resist.

"Funky, Funky Xmas" was the flip side of the New Kids' 1989 hit "This One's For The Children" but apparently was not listed on the chart. For what it's worth, that single has a dismal 1.43 as its average Rate Your Music score. The same Christmas records from as far back as the 1940s keep reappearing on the Hot 100 every holiday season, but "Funky, Funky Xmas" just didn't have as much staying power.

One reason why Christmas oldies rechart each year is that many radio stations on the Hot 100 panel switch to a format of all holiday music each season, yet are not dropped from the panel during that time. This temporary format blows off many listeners who hope to hear the station's regular format instead. By the time all these listeners return, it's time for the next holiday cycle. But a growing factor in the annual chart reappearance of old Christmas songs is that the music of the past few years is just not a mass appeal medium like the big pop hits of our day were.

"Funky, Funky Xmas" makes generous use of the vibraslap - that instrument that sounds like a rattlesnake. Every time I hear that instrument, I think of the 1970s police dramas where the cop and the villain are stalking each other in a warehouse. You can imagine the cop and robber slinking around and peeping out from behind walls as the spooky music plays, and every so often, the vibraslap goes off. The rattling gets louder when one of them pulls their gun. "Tonight on The Rookies...Vibraslap!"

(Random trivia about The Rookies that doesn't fit anywhere else: When Viacom began distributing reruns of The Rookies in syndication, they butchered some episodes and completely skipped others because they thought they were too "violent" - even though they had aired on prime time network TV without any trouble years earlier.)

This song came out at the peak of society's New Kids infatuation. In the '90s, we turned the page on that sorry chapter (but sadly not much else). In 1991, the New Kids' Donnie Wahlberg was charged with arson for allegedly pouring vodka on a carpet in a hallway of a Louisville hotel and setting it ablaze. Two of the group's guards were charged with disorderly conduct for allegedly abusing hotel employees. This followed a series of other incidents, including one in which a young man claimed Donnie attacked him for refusing to give up his seat on a plane. Vibraslap!

The hotel episode caused a Kentucky concert by the group to be canceled. I first heard about the cancellation when it was announced on the radio, but little did I know the sordid details yet. At first, I just thought it was due to illness, as when Paul McCartney canceled not long before.

As for New Kids On The Block, little has been heard from this ridiculous group since.