"Big Log" by Robert Plant

1983 / #20

Rate Your Music score: 3.66 out of 5!

"Led Zeppelin rules!"

Robert Plant was the legendary lead vocalist of Led Zeppelin, one of the pioneering bands of heavy metal. Of course, this blog is designed to cover every popular music genre, from metal to rap to country to soft rock to new wave to R&B, but metal might not be represented as well as many readers would like.

However, there was a time in my youth when I actually sort of admired some metal acts, including those with few or no chart singles. I had pals who liked metal to the complete exclusion of everything else. I also noticed that metal was under particular attack from the censors. But this censorship spread to other styles of music. A particularly aggravating incident took place in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where some right-wing preacher forced the cancellation of an Ozzy Osbourne concert. The clergyman vowed to keep all hard rock shows out of Baton Rouge, but the ban also reportedly kept Barry Manilow and Alabama out of town. Forty years later, local residents said the Baton Rouge concert scene still hadn't recovered.

(Some years before the Baton Rouge ban, a city-owned venue in Denver banned rock concerts. The band America - who gave us such dangerous anthems as "Daisy Jane" and "The Border" - was deemed too hard to be allowed to perform there. A lawsuit by the band's promoter forced the city to relent. This venue is still said by music fans to be one of the worst around. Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles might be worse though, as it gets terrible reviews due to abusive staff.)

Led Zeppelin was still one of the most widely admired bands in the world even several years after they tragically disbanded. So at one point, MTV opted to air a Led Zeppelin special. It was around that time that I first heard the expression that something "rules." MTV kept running a promo for this special that featured a group of teenagers declaring, "Led Zeppelin rules!" It wasn't just a statement. It was an exhortation.

That was also after Robert Plant's solo single "Big Log." It's hard to imagine a slice of blues rock like "Big Log" appearing on top 40 radio today, but back then, it didn't seem strange to me. This was before pop stations began dropping each genre little by little (as another one of his singles would say) and not adding new ones quickly enough to replace them. By the end of the 1980s, I was told that songs like "Big Log" would never be played alongside later music, for fear that each would scare away fans of the other. This extreme narrowcasting signaled the rise of the 15-second mind.

And where did the title "Big Log" come from? I know you're getting excited hearing all this talk about "logs", much like how any mention of David Bowie is sure to rehash the story about "elimination", but we can only rely on toilet humor for so long. It turns out that the song is called "Big Log" all because Robert found an old log that he used for firewood.

The record might sound like it would have belonged on album rock radio. But with the narrowcasting of today, it now seems downright weird that it was ever heard on top 40 radio.

"Shake It" by Ian Matthews

1978 / #13

Rate Your Music score: 3.07 out of 5!

"She's got a picture in her locker...An autographed basketball..."

Don't be confused by websites that spell this performer's name Iain. He officially changed the spelling of his name in 1989.

People talk about how they remember a song on the radio in the late 1970s that sang about "an autographed basketball." Well, it's this one. It's about someone who keeps a picture of an autographed basketball in her locker.

When I was in school, I knew better than to store anything of such great value in my locker, because people kept breaking into the lockers. It was particularly bad in high school, when the locks were a separate piece from the locker instead of being built-in. Apparently, somebody kept sawing them off with a hacksaw. At least once, someone threw a lock into the toilet. The school refused to replace our locks when someone removed them. Then the school made us pay for textbooks that got stolen from our lockers because we didn't have a lock.

We had to pay for the stolen locks too. The school charged an inflated price for these. I saw this brand of lock being sold at a store for a fraction of the cost, but we were required to use the locks provided by the school.

Around the same time Iain's now-lost hit was popular, the sport of basketball had a big advertising campaign. I don't know who was paying for it. I don't think it was a major league like the NBA or a particular brand of basketballs like Spalding or Wilson. I remember a radio commercial that featured what sounded like a loud fart, followed by a woman singing, "Basketbaaaaaaaall!"

"Ppppphhh! Basketbaaaaaaaall!"

I also recall that around the same time, there was a gum commercial that seemed to have fart noises sprinkled throughout the jingle. People would dance around to this ad and act like they were farting, but unfortunately, not everyone saw the humor in this.

But it was truly a slam dunk!

"Love's Got A Line On You" by Scandal

1983 / #59

Rate Your Music score: 3.15 out of 5!

It's almost a matter of principle that we need to include more Scandal on this blog. Man, does Scandal ever rule!

I even saw them in concert a couple times more than 20 years after their heyday. Throughout each show, lead singer Patty Smyth was chewin' bubble gum! She didn't bubble. But she was chewin' bubble gum!

Here we're profiling another great Scandal single that sadly missed the top 40. I have to admit that the pop stations in Cincinnati actually made a good choice by playing this record despite its low chart peak. Along with hits by DeBarge and Kajagoogoo, I remember that this song would crop up during the summer before 5th grade when I took the infamous "Are you ready?" hearing test. I also had to take one of those tests where you arrange pieces of paper with drawings on them to form a story. What a waste of time those tests were.

Eventually, we buyed Scandal's self-titled EP that included the lost hit we're profiling today. Not only was the record full of great tracks, but I was also amused by the back cover of it. The back of the record jacket showed Patty dancing and making a funny face with her mouth open. During one of the concerts I attended, a fan had this record sleeve and was proudly holding it up and waving it around, with this picture visible.

For the most part, this blog deals with recordings, not concerts. I was a broadcaster. I was lucky ever to see Scandal in concert, because there weren't very many interesting acts that came to town. A lot of rockers avoided Cincinnati even before they saw how shabbily the Damn Yankees were treated. I do remember once around 1996 - about a decade before I saw Scandal - when I was woken up at about 3 PM when a family member called with the news that there was a concert coming to town by some act who might be fun to see. I was asleep at 3 PM because this was during the particularly crushing timeframe after the NKU disaster - an era that the media somehow thinks was some shimmering renaissance.

I am the warrior.

"When We Kiss" by Bardeux

1988 / #36

Rate Your Music score: 3.01 out of 5!

"I know all about your checkered past..."

This entry is a lesson in how to humiliate an adversary - 1988 style.

These days, paid troll farms might be too sophisticated to make comebacks like this effective. But it was dynamite in 1988.

Let's go back to when I was in high school - perhaps late during freshman year. Because I was surrounded by spoiled idiots all day, it was a guarantee that I'd catch them saying or doing something incredibly stupid at least once every 30 seconds.

They might start a typical conversation by asking something like, "Remember last year when you got a 68 on a history test?"

I might reply, "Remember last week when you got caught in the restroom with a Sears catalog?"

Pretty quickly, however, I realized that more had to be done to combat these little twerps. Bardeux to the rescue!

After Bardeux's now-lost hit was released, I used a line from the song as a new comeback: "I know all about your checkered past."

Anyone who I used that line on was huuuuuuuuuumiliated! They got a look on their face like Dan Quayle did after Lloyd Bentsen told him, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." The person stumbled backwards like a buffoon. Then they looked like they were about to cry!

Actually, I didn't know all about their checkered past. I just acted like I did, because present behavior seems to be a good indicator of past behavior. But the way they reacted to the Bardeux line shows my assumptions were correct.

This line usually didn't work over stupid stuff. After I began using this line, somebody tried using it to make some point that is now forgotten. It just bounced off like water off a duck's back.

We've played this game 1,000 times before.

"Solitaire" by Laura Branigan

1983 / #7

Rate Your Music score: 3.12 out of 5!

Whooooo, man!

You know exactly where this is headed, don't you?

As I've stated before, a top 10 hit shouldn't be lost. But the AM radio in the Horizon was still mostly pasted to the MOR mainstays of the era. My folks had only recently discovered that you didn't need a special permit to add WCLU to the presets, and old habits die hard. So "Solitaire" never felt like a #7.

With a title like "Solitaire", it's just too obvious where this is going. It sounds like one of these sayings we had a few years later in high school art class. The teacher would often just up and disappear for 40 minutes at a time. He'd suddenly announce he was going to his office, which was in another building. Then we didn't see him again until class was almost over.

In the meantime, people would be asking, "Where is he?"

One of the responses was, "Probably playing solitaire."

But there was no mention of a deck of 51 or Captain Kangaroo, much to the Statler Brothers' chagrin.

While the teacher was out of the room, we kept hitting the ceiling with a broom handle and yelling, "Boist!" so the classrooms upstairs could hear us. People kept farting really loud too. One time, a classmate farted, and somebody replied, "That sounded important." One other time, someone farted, and somebody responded, "Thanks for the news, Dan Rather."

The "Solitaire" video is amusing too. In that clip, Laura Branigan displays the utterly mature trick of holding up a deck of cards and bending them so they fly all over the room. When I was growing up, I was taught this valuable trick by a neighborhood teenager. It takes skill. Laura's technique was different though in that she bent the cards backward instead of forward. I always thought forward had funnier results.

Sadly, Laura died of a cerebral aneurysm in 2004. What Wikipedia calls an "age controversy" then emerged. At the time, her age was reported to be 47. It wasn't until 12 years later - in 2016 - that the Associated Press and other news outlets issued a correction. It was only then that they discovered she was actually 52.

"Music Time" by Styx

1984 / #40

Rate Your Music score: 2.77 out of 5!

"Hey everybody, it's music time!"

It's music time, everybody! This lost hit is known for its memorable opening exhortation - which I lampooned for many years thereafter. Every evening, I announced, "Hey everybody, it's homework time!" It was always homework time. For hours on end each night.

This went on for well over 5 years.

"Music Time" is a particularly odd entry in the Styx catalog. Though it was a studio track, it was added to what was otherwise a live double album to meet a contractual obligation. By the time the LP was released, the band had broken up. The song and its video also highlight the conflicts within the band. Guitarist Tommy Shaw hated the song and left Styx while the video was being made. He also refused to appear in the part of the video that showed band members' heads on plates in a restaurant.

The disagreements in the band often surrounded lead singer Dennis DeYoung's penchant for showmanship. For example, in 1982, he shaved off his mustache during a concert in Tokyo that drew 10,000 cheering fans. In the years after "Music Time", Styx got back together and broke up again and again. Apparently, they're back, and they still give concerts. But Dennis long ago left the band, which rarely performs his songs now. Guitarist James Young said, "This is a rock band. This is not a band that does show tunes."

But in my household for many years, it was always homework time. Hard work was the rule. And it was always all for naught. Every evening when I was done with dinner, I grabbed my books, marched into the den, and said, "Hey everybody, it's homework time!" This statement was delivered in the same robot-like manner as the intro to Styx's hit. But my heart sank every time I got my assignment back and saw my grade for it.

Something else like this is a conversation that took place every Friday evening in the mid-'80s.

"Dallas is on tonight."

"Who do they play?"

Get it? Like the Dallas Cowboys!

I had too little time on my hands.

"Mutual Surrender (What A Wonderful World)" by Bourgeois Tagg

1986 / #62

Rate Your Music score: 3.18 out of 5!

"I throw up my hands for you..."

This lost hit by this Sacramento band ranks up there with Crystal Gayle's line about "overflowing."

With lyrics like "I throw up my hands for you", the song doesn't need much elaboration. What makes it even funnier is that this act - though not a huge chart presence - had such a squeaky clean image like Judson Spence. They made Glass Tiger and Mr. Mister look like Marilyn Manson in comparison.

Lead singer Brent Bourgeois looked sort of like Chris de Burgh trying to emulate the Javier Milei look. Brent went on to have a solo hit that edged into the top 40 a few years later. Maybe we'll get to it someday. A friend of this blog once said that acts like Mr. Mister and Genesis circa their Invisible Touch set were like a "yacht rock" revival, but I think Brent's solo career might have a stronger claim on that.

Whatever the weather, the lost hit we're profiling today seems to represent a time when musical tastes and aesthetics shifted. It was roughly the era when MTV ditched its set that looked like the back room of a friendly record shop and replaced it with a background of forgettable sped-up film clips. I always think of the commercial for chocolate mint Bubblicious as an embodiment of this shift. It was also the same time everyone was supposed to start wearing flowered surfer shorts all the time. Or if that violated our school's dress code (as most things did), we were supposed to wear booger green pants that said "OFF DUTY" all over them.

"It's Money That Matters" by Randy Newman

1988 / #60

Rate Your Music score: 3.31 out of 5!

Unless you had the attention span of a grape, it was hard being a music fan in 1988. In fact, it was hard doing anything in 1988.

I was alive then, and a lot of things people did and said then were idiotic beyond belief. Remember, this was before social media, so we had to deal with most of it in person. Of all of the people I used to know, most never adjusted to the great big world.

The year only had a few music highlights. One of them was Randy Newman's single we're profiling today - though it sadly fell short of the top 40. In fact, his only top 40 hit was "Short People." I remember hearing "Short People" on the car radio when I was growing up and thinking it was hilarious. Randy also reminded me of my eye doctor who I used to visit in my day, as he had the same curly hair and glasses.

Life was a shambles by 1988 when "It's Money That Matters" rolled along. America was living up to the song's title. The excesses and vagaries of capitalism and militarism - though shunned by most people you met in normal venues - were honored by the media, my high school classmates, and computer bulletin board trolls. And we heard endless talk about the "drought" too, just for good measure - even though the Home Run Derby was supposed to be in Cincinnati that year, and rain forced it to be canceled for the only time in its history.

Also, I have a record of "It's Money That Matters." I remember listening to it one day and it skipped because the neighbors kept banging things around and I jumped to try to get them to stop.

Many years after the song charted, Will Sasso gave us some uproarious segments on Mad TV in which he played Randy Newman composing songs for the latest Star Wars and Toy Story films...

"Headed For A Heartbreak" by Winger

1989 / #19

Rate Your Music score: 2.96 out of 5!

When was the last time you even thought about this song?

I know where I was when I first heard this cut. It was in St. Louis during my trip where I wrote "Placed by the Gideons" on a record from a Froot Loops box and put it inside the Bible in a motel room. That followed a year that was completely shot to hell by my shitty high school.

Naturally, the school made me repeat the year. I spent the last 6 months of my first attempt at sophomore year goofing off after the principal told me I was going to fail anyway. For the life of me, I don't know why I came back to the same school, but it wasn't my choice.

This story is like a continuation of my entry on "Look Out Any Window" by Bruce Hornsby & the Range. During my first sophomore year, I took art, and the teacher often let us listen to the radio. When Bruce's now-lost hit was on, we lip-synced to it in a comically exaggerated fashion. Art class only had 5 students, and I think I failed the class by one point.

During my second sophomore year, this class was down to 3 students, and we were all among the 5 from the previous year. The other 2 had transferred out of the school completely, because it was such a bad school. At the start of the school year, Winger's now-lost hit was at its peak, and it too got the Bruce Hornsby treatment.

When the bridge of Winger's record came on, a student began lip-syncing it with a hilariously crazed look in his eye. He creepily glared as he mouthed the lyrics. It was as funny as you might imagine.

Whenever something like this happened and people started laughing, the teacher would always get an irritated look on his face and ask, "What's funny?"

Also, between sophomore years was when I had my first Fourth of July bonfire. I conducted this bonfire in my back yard, and I mostly burned textbooks that I was saddled with - which were already ripped to shreds because the school used books that were at least 15 years old. In later years, the bonfires mostly sipped away household trash like light bulbs and broken appliances, but this proud tradition withered and died after we could no longer find a place to do it.

"How You Gonna See Me Now" by Alice Cooper

1978 / #12

Rate Your Music score: 3.14 out of 5!

Alice Cooper, as you may know, was a pioneer of shock rock. In fact, he was so shocking that one of his biggest hits was the ballad we're profiling here today. Alice had become so soft by 1978 that this record even appeared on Billboard's middle-of-the-road chart alongside the Carpenters and Engelbert Humperdinck.

Yet - as is often the case with songs profiled here - I never saw the video for this now-lost hit until I stumbled upon it on YouTube. Believe it or not, YouTube used to have stuff other than police bodycam videos and AI-generated editorials attacking parents who speak at school board meetings. I found Alice's video back when the big YouTube fads were family vlogs and cosmetic dentistry ads. Those were the days, huh? The "How You Gonna See Me Now" clip actually is a conceptual video instead of just a stage performance, as Alice is wheeled into a psychiatric ward where he chews bubble gum.

One particular Alice Cooper-related incident highlights just how stodgy our local TV stations are. In 1972, ABC debuted a late-night series called In Concert, which featured taped performances of music acts of the era. The show's premiere included Alice Cooper. But our local ABC affiliate broke away from that episode, as they considered Alice too shocking for Cincinnati airwaves - even late at night. The show was replaced with a Rawhide rerun. It was believed that this was the only ABC affiliate in the whole country that didn't show this In Concert episode.

This censorship caused teenage fans of the singer to picket the station. Following these protests, the station decided to broadcast the episode later - but with Alice's appearance removed. The station's manager then said he wasn't opposed to all rock concerts, because "we think they're going to be a smashing success."

"Going to be"? It was already 1972. Rock concerts had been "a smashing success" for 20 years. That's like if somebody today said, "We think the Internet is going to be a smashing success."

That wasn't even the only incident like that on our local network affiliates in that era. A few years later, Cher got a new show, and our CBS affiliate reportedly refused to show it, as they considered Cher's outfits too revealing.

Alice Cooper was one of these acts who went on to make a stunning comeback in 1989 along with many other 1970s performers. A year or so after that, I was at my desk at school and was flipping through an atlas they had. That was one of approximately 3 books in the whole school, so that was the only activity we had. When I paged past the map of Michigan, one of my classmates saw it and noted that the Wolverine State is "Alice Cooper's hometown."

Not long after, this student came to school drunk. For him, school was out forever.

"Hearts In Trouble" by Chicago

1990 / #75

Rate Your Music score: 1.83 out of 5!

This blog is not a place for catatonic worship of musical artists, no matter how many positive contributions they've made.

In my day, I adored Chicago's now-lost hit "Alive Again." By the mid-1980s, we poked fun at the band a lot because they had softened up so much, but they still occasionally put out an action-packed rocker. But I think it was pretty much downhill for them after that.

One of my high school teachers noted that Chicago was one of the few major bands in popular music that had lasted 20 years. But they weren't really the same band, as they had so many membership changes.

"Hearts In Trouble" wasn't a really soft ballad, but it's associated with the frustration that coincided with Chicago's decline. A reviewer on Rate Your Music noted, "Great band; lousy track." This record rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but they just can't figure out why. I have to admit that when I used to hear this song, it wasn't under the best circumstances. It was like the grand finale of a series of crises that had built up over the preceding few years.

When I first heard this song, I knew it had to be from a movie. What's more is that I knew it had to be from a film I had no plans to see. Sure enough, it turns out it's from a motion picture titled Days Of Thunder - a movie that I don't even remember existing. On the page for "Hearts In Trouble", another Rate Your Music critic said Chicago "could turn in some of the best jazz/rock on the planet but got reduced to supplying songs for lame, crappy big budget films."

Wikipedia says Billboard reported that this single - even though it went on to peak only at #75 - was one of the most added records to American radio station playlists during the week of July 21, 1990. Oh, I believe that. Memories are long. It also appears to be one of few singles to make the Hot 100 whose flip side was by a different act. Its flip was "Car Building" by German composer Hans Zimmer. Zimmer is known for the quote, "I'd much rather everyone made music as opposed to going and beating the shit out of each other."

But no music today represents the culmination of a crisis, because no crisis today is ever dealt with, and the crisis simply becomes permanent.

"A Girl In Trouble (Is A Temporary Thing)" by Romeo Void

1984 / #35

Rate Your Music score: 3.64 out of 5!

This bouncy record by this San Francisco band is exactly the sort of mid-1980s song that got me interested in lost hits in the first place. It was just a big enough hit that it got a few spins on pop radio, but just minor enough that stations stopped playing it for good after only a few weeks. Most such tracks - like this one - fall into the category of new wave, but perhaps that's because it was the mid-'80s.

Romeo Void's fine single is particularly qualified for this blog because it peaked during a brief window after which life has never been able to recover its former glory. The late 2010s came close in some ways - but just not musically.

It helps that the mid-'80s were a good time for music - even by '80s standards. It beats the ballad-heavy early '80s and the often insufferably stale late '80s. I'm as fond of music from 1983-85 as I am of the great music of 1978-79.

Strangely, I don't ever remember seeing the "A Girl In Trouble" video back in the '80s. However, I seem to recall the instrumental break in the middle being used in an unlikely venue: Not Necessarily The News. I'm pretty sure this show once had a segment in which "A Girl In Trouble" served as the bed music.

Probably my favorite NNTN segment though was a parody of the Civil War Chess Set commercial that used different kinds of cheese as chess pieces, and they leaked all over the board. NNTN also once had a segment called "Senator Hogg" - a reference to Boss Hogg - that used footage of Jesse Helms.

Subscribing to a premium cable channel was a temporary thing. I don't know how much longer we had HBO, but we weren't made of money, and I don't remember ever seeing HBO much after the mid-'80s.

"My Love Is A Fire" by Donny Osmond

1990 / #21

Rate Your Music score: 2.34 out of 5!

"Baste!"

Remember the days when Donny Osmond, St. Paul, and Nelson (but especially the first two) seemed to be in a contest to see who could sound more like the others? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Donny had a big comeback that started in 1989, and his return was actually more commercially successful than that of other 1970s acts who reappeared at the same time. It was as if there was a constitutional provision that took effect then that required any '70s performer who was not Donny Osmond to be subsequently excluded from the top 6 of the Hot 100. Chart performance at the time was fueled overwhelmingly by radio, which could make or break hits at the snap of a finger.

Donny's comeback coincided with the "baste" craze. This tendency to say "baste" confronting almost every situation managed to spread to multiple schools locally. Just before the lost hit profiled in this entry charted, I had switched to a high school that was less bad than the one before, and all this "baste" business was just as big there - and just as hilarious.

This lost hit was like a basteplane of baste-o-matic proportions. At about 14 seconds in, Donny seems to declare, "Baste!"

I don't ever remember seeing the video back then, but the video just drives home the point.

One would almost think Donny also had a song called "5 Out Of 5" and that he followed up this set several years later with a cut titled "Burn Gum, It Melts." You may be surprised that he didn't later record a song called "Pooing Is Cool" that he released early on YouTube.

Donny filled in for Shadoe Stevens as host of American Top 40 for the week ending February 17, 1990. This brings to mind a funny recollection about AT40 of the early '90s. At the time, one of the show's jingles when coming out of a commercial break was preceded by a man bellowing, "Heeyyyyyyyy!" So I went up to the vents in the floor and yelled, "Heeyyyyyyyy!" That way, the rest of the house could hear it. My mom got mad because the noise kept her awake.

I remember another AT40 installment that was themed around something from Star Trek that only the most ardent Trekkies had ever heard of. Interestingly, this episode of the countdown is now highly desired by collectors.

The early '90s were full of records that charted much higher than this one that are completely forgotten now. Maybe we'll delve into this phenomenon in depth sometime.

"Let's Work" by Mick Jagger

1987 / #39

Rate Your Music score: 2.66 out of 5!

Let's work!

Let's not rest. Let's not play. Let's work!

This lost hit was a minor top 40 entry by the legendary Rolling Stones vocalist. You may remember the video with Mick running down a highway along with a huge group of people who appeared to be employed in various occupations. He wrote the song with the Eurythmics' Dave Stewart.

According to one website, Mick came up with the idea for the song when his girlfriend got mad at him because he refused to buy a house for their young daughter. She would have to work and earn it like everyone else.

A YouTube commenter said he was one of the firefighters in the video, but that he always hated the song. Another commenter said he was reminded of the song when his brother-in-law who he hired to do a job decided to just sit there and do nothing. Still another commenter said, "The left would call this song hate speech today." No we wouldn't. We would call it many things, but we wouldn't call it that. It's not like it's Ace Of Base or something.

Also, the surgeons in this video look like they're holding their knives and tools like they're about to kill someone.

If a song and video like this came out now, the entire endeavor would look mighty silly. It was bad enough that offshoring, corporate greed, and cronyism took so many jobs afterward, but now AI has stolen the rest of the jobs. These days, we'd see Mick Jagger being chased by an army of robots laughing at him because his royalty checks are taken to fund Parliament's leather stationery.

"I Gotta Try" by Michael McDonald

1982 / #44

Rate Your Music score: 3.2 out of 5!

We're due for more "yacht rock", aren't we?

That's the name for much of the slickly produced soft rock of the late 1970s and early 1980s. I still don't know why it's called that. The term is applied to many big radio hits of the era, and the lost hit in this entry did get a lot of airplay then.

This entry also gives us a chance to once again rake Solid Gold through coals. Parts of the show were genuinely entertaining. Some of it was actually a little bit cruel, like when comedian George Wallace appeared in a 1983 episode and made a joke about how Joe Cocker was in a Memorex ad and his face broke the glass. But the Solid Gold countdown was like a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a random number generator. I knew about the Hot 100 thanks to Casey Kasem's radio and TV shows, but I noticed the rankings on Solid Gold were way off from that. The closing credits of some episodes say, "The ranking of hit songs contained in this program was compiled by the producers after reviewing standard industry sources." Alright then, what sources?

Radio stations used to compile their own rankings, but even many individual stations provided more clues than Solid Gold did. Some of them put out printed survey sheets each week that said the numbers came from local record sales and requests to the station. A website describes how a major New York station would compile its survey by calling up record stores in the area and getting a list of their best-selling singles. The stores were chosen randomly to keep them from hyping records, and each call was recorded so the store knew to be honest. But it was also a relatively conservative station, not a fast-add station that we'd prefer.

The clip featured above for Michael McDonald's lost hit came from Solid Gold. I'm pretty sure that this single later reached the show's top 10 - even though it only hit #44 on the authentic Hot 100. At the time, I wrongly assumed it must have been close to the top 10 of the Hot 100, especially considering how much I heard it on the radio.

I think I remember hearing it on the car radio one day when we went to a doctor appointment when I was 9. I also recall hearing "Hand To Hold On To" by John Mellencamp and "You Got Lucky" by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. It was the only time I ever visited that doctor. This practice was in the same building as a pizza restaurant where we had lunch that day. I forgot all about it until I was over 40 when a friend told me she thought she had a dentist in that building who was a money-grubbing creep.

A lot of folks poke fun at Michael McDonald these days, but he has true fans. Someone on YouTube wrote, "You should go to jail if you don't like Michael McDonald." That statement is a sign of a truly dedicated fan base.

"Dancing In Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)" by Q-Feel

1989 / #75

Rate Your Music score: 3.29 out of 5!

This now-lost hit was actually first released in 1982 and barely scraped onto Billboard's Bubbling Under the Hot 100 chart. But in 1989 - several years after it bubbled - it was rereleased, and only then did it reach the Hot 100. I only started hearing it then. I can't remember what station I kept hearing it on though.

And the video is a sight to behold.

I never saw the video until YouTube came along. Remember, it only made the main chart in 1989, and MTV was past its prime then. Kids at school still watched MTV, and they said some of the stupidest stuff imaginable about things they saw, but I didn't think MTV was nearly as exciting as it once was. Also, MTV kept going out on our local cable system. It went out just before something we actually wanted to watch, which caused a family member to accuse Storer Cable of "assholism." According to Wiktionary, assholism actually is a real word, and has appeared in print at least since 1970.

At the time, MTV actually had an afternoon program hosted by Martha Quinn that was full of "classic" music videos shown in the channel's early years. But those videos were only a few years old then. The equivalent today would be chronologically only about as far back as the U.S. Capitol riot or even Elon Musk's Twitter purchase.

Now, back to Q-Feel's video. The band's lead singer looks like "Weird Al" Yankovic wearing red pants, a ball cap, and a bunch of equipment strapped to his body. The other men look like they're wearing some sort of military pilot uniform. The women look like they're wearing something out of Star Trek. The participants all dance around, smiling their asses off.

I guess I missed all of this in the '80s, because the heyday of music videos was right between releases of this single. The rest of the '80s was driven by radio. These days, radio has little influence, and MTV has none at all, but our museum of lost hits is rooted in the days of these older media.

"Sweet Dreams" by Air Supply

1981 / #5

Rate Your Music score: 2.81 out of 5!

You figured we'd eventually get to the Air Supply ice monster, didn't you?

Air Supply in the early 1980s was not unlike Richard Marx or Phil Collins were in the late 1980s, in that you couldn't go more than 10 seconds without hearing them on the radio. Back then, any of Air Supply's hit singles ever becoming a lost hit would have been considered preposterous. But "Sweet Dreams" - part of the band's string of #5 hits - has somehow managed to do it, much to the surprise of anyone alive during the winter of 1981-82.

It's not much of an exaggeration to say this song used to be on the radio constantly. When I think of 1982, I think of playing in the living room each evening before dinner, while my mom had the now-forgotten local radio station Yes 95 blasting on the stereo. Go on ARSA's playlist archive and look under WYYS. Guess what song was #1 on the station's playlist for 2 weeks starting on February 9, 1982?

"Sweet Dreams" is actually a rather unusual entry in the Air Supply catalog. The band decided for a few brief minutes that they wanted to be hippies by offering a track that was less formulaic and featured unusual instrumentation. Hence the ice monster. Fast-forward the above clip to about 4:28. The record includes 6 piano notes that always reminded me of an ice monster grinning menacingly at unsuspecting comers.

The ice monster's grin was also like that of some kid at school who kept bothering everyone. In addition, there was a jeans commercial right around that time that ended with a young man slowly turning around and displaying that same ominous smirk. There were only a few people capable of producing this creepy look. It's like when criminologists used to judge a person's character from their facial appearance.

Years later, someone posted online that the scary Rankin/Bass bumper used at the end of many Christmas specials was similarly evocative of an ice monster. You be the judge...

That bumper was also likened to the spooky sounds heard at the very end of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood accompanying the drawing of the trolley, but we digress.

Even a colorful mental image of an ice monster couldn't ease the frustration of hearing the same Air Supply ballad repeated over and over. And it's not as if Journey or Kenny Rogers didn't also have ballads at the time that were just as pervasive on our airwaves. I was so aggravated by the punishing repetition of the MOR malaise of the early '80s that even the top 10 countdown on Solid Gold provoked an annoyed reaction. One Saturday, we had the TV on Solid Gold, and the countdown got up to #1. What might be atop the Solid Gold survey that weekend? The J. Geils Band? Stevie Wonder? The Cars?

You guessed it! It was "Sweet Dreams" by Air Supply.

I distinctly remember letting out a frustrated groan upon hearing this. It sounded just like the N'Ice commercial where the man threw down his cards. Incidentally, the chart rankings posted at the top of each entry on this blog are from Billboard's Hot 100 - the most authoritative chart in the beeswax - not the laughable Solid Gold ranking. Thus, "Sweet Dreams" is an official #5 rather than a #1. I don't know where Soiled Gold got their numbers from, but I think that was when I started to assume they just pulled the chart out of their ass. It could be pretty hilarious to see what they could come up with though, so I still watched the show after that.

"Tender Is The Night" by Jackson Browne

1983 / #25

Rate Your Music score: 3.07 out of 5!

"Tender..."

As we were emerging from the musical malaise of the early 1980s, this lost hit was one of these songs I remember hearing on the AM radio in the car on the way to and from school in 5th grade - along with "Modern Love" by David Bowie and "Undercover Of The Night" by the Rolling Stones.

And - similar to the lost hit "She Ain't Pretty" by the Northern Pikes - it comes in handy many decades after its chart run when describing restaurant meals.

Sometimes you'll order an item at a restaurant that you expect to be tough. But once in a while, you get a pleasant surprise.

When this happens, we start singing, "Tender..." We sing it in the same way Jackson Browne did in the last portion of his song. This has been going on for years.

Is that chicken sandwich tough? Nope, it's...tender...duh-dummm...

What about that macaroni or the complimentary side of fried grouch? No, it's...tender...duh-dummm...

What about your Coke? Tender...duh-dummm...

Hey, they charge a fee if you pay with a credit card! Tough...duh-dummm...

Tender are the memories of the lost hits profiled on this blog.

"Angelia" by Richard Marx

1989 / #4

Rate Your Music score: 3.2 out of 5!

If you said back in 1989 that Richard Marx would someday appear on a list of lost hits, a face would have been laughed in. That face would have been yours. Richard ranked right up there with Phil Collins in that every pop station played him at least once an hour.

Q-102 was particularly awash in Marx mania. ARSA reveals that the station placed "Right Here Waiting" at #1 on its playlist for 7 consecutive weeks. It wasn't even one of his rockers. It was a ballad among ballads. Imagine being a DJ on Q-102 and having to play the same ballad every 2 hours for 7 weeks. And that was during the summer, when radio should have been full of bright, cheery, fun music. Ballads should have been saved for the other 10 months of the year when it's rainy and dreary anyway.

That track didn't even disappear with 1989. ARSA also shows that during the week of November 18, 1994 - I repeat, 1994 - "Right Here Waiting" suddenly popped back up again and was played 22 times that week on Q-102. A station that supposedly had a format of current pop played a 5-year-old ballad 3 times a day!

But this entry profiles Richard's follow-up single "Angelia" - which has indeed become a lost hit.

Like the song in the previous entry, "Angelia" is connected to an assignment for high school art class in which we wrote fictional letters by relatives of supposedly well-known artists.

I had to come up with a name for a person being addressed in one of the letters. Much like how Phil Collins came up with Sussudio, I came up with Basteolia. It rhymed with Angelia - the woman Richard Marx sang about. The difference is that it had "baste" in it. "Baste-uh-lee-uh."

I started one of the letters, "Dear Basteolia." To the surprise of absolutely nobody, when I got the assignment back, it had a big, red X over that part.

Where you running to now, Basteolia?

"Sincerely Yours" by Sweet Sensation with Romeo J.D.

1989 / #14

Rate Your Music score: 2.29 out of 5!

Sophomore year of high school should have a big red X over it - as if scrawled by an angry teacher on a test you failed. But which sophomore year? My school didn't count it the first time, but the first was actually the worse of the two - if you don't count the particularly outrageous butchery at the end of the second.

During the second attempt - months before the disastrous events that closed out the year - the art teacher gave us an unusual assignment. This project dealt with a famous (?) artist. We had to write what appeared to be a series of letters between the artist's relatives.

I figured my grade was already predetermined, so I had no reason to even take the assignment seriously. I looked to Sweet Sensation's now-lost hit for guidance.

This record includes a rap by Romeo J.D. that seems to espouse a Billy Ray Cyrus-like conspiracy theory about missing mail. This rap in particular influenced how I did this assignment.

At the end of one of the letters between the artist's relatives that made up the assignment, I wrote, "If ever this letter should reach your door, you'll find it signed sincerely yours."

Needless to say, that got the red X treatment. You can almost hear the record's freestyle percussion and background vocals as the teacher's red pen works its magic!

"Sincerely Yours" isn't the only lost hit associated with this assignment. There was another that charted a bit higher that also left its imprint on that project - much to the chagrin of an angry high school art instructor. We'll get to it very soon.

"If I Had A Rocket Launcher" by Bruce Cockburn

1985 / #88

Rate Your Music score: 3.7 out of 5!

First things first: MTV always mispronounced the name of this bespectacled Canadian folk rock singer-songwriter. It's "ko-burn." It's not pronounced the way it's spelled.

I had forgotten about this lost hit for many years, until recently when YouTube yanked the video for it as too "violent." Bruce wrote the song after an Oxfam-sponsored visit to camps for Guatemalan refugees in Mexico. The camps had been attacked by Guatemalan military helicopters.

YouTube recently pulled the video even though MTV aired it without any problems at all in 1985. The video included real footage of events in Guatemala that inspired the song. But Bruce said the song "is not a call to arms. This is a cry."

This song is not to be confused with "If I Had $1000000" by the Barenaked Ladies. However, when the Barenakeds performed their song in concert, they often inserted the "Some son of a bitch would die" line from Bruce's lost hit.

"Don't Look Down - The Sequel" by Go West

1987 / #39

Rate Your Music score: 3.15 out of 5!

These guys pretended their shit's not stinking!

Over the course of 8 years or so, the London duo Go West would occasionally pop up with a hit single here and there. The lost hit we're profiling today is among this string of tunes.

Now, the thing about this is that I never saw the video for this action-packed song until it appeared on YouTube not long ago. And when it did, I burst out laughing! That's because Go West looked almost like an exaggerated rendering of another London act of the era: Wang Chung. Even funnier, the members of Go West - especially the singer - kept mugging for the camera throughout, and looked absolutely ridiculous doing so.

At least they had a good time up on stage. That's better than the stuff that goes on now. These days, even the biggest festivals in town consist mostly of people just moping around with blank stares. I went to baseball's Opening Day parade a few years ago, and nobody seemed to notice there even was a parade. It's better to look ridiculous in a 1980s way than be a Debbie Downer in a 2020s way.

And why is this "The Sequel"? Apparently, this record was a remix of a track from an earlier album. But it sounds like there's not much difference.

I associate this song with a couple other lost hits from around the same time: "Something Real (Inside Me/Inside You)" by Mr. Mister and "One For The Mockingbird" by Cutting Crew. They're all similar in that the record peaked in the lower reaches of the top 40 after the band had become well-known for other songs. The difference is that - unlike with those other acts - Go West's earlier songs that I had heard actually missed the top 40.

We close our eyes to time slipping away!

"Three Times In Love" by Tommy James

1980 / #19

Rate Your Music score: 3.03 out of 5!

Time for some fond memories of the 1979-80 season. I was a youngster only 6 years of age, and America still had promise.

At the time, there were many weekday evenings when my mom dropped me off at my grandparents' house. They always had the TV on in the living room, and that was my introduction to The Joker's Wild, the game show hosted by the late Jack Barry. A strange thing, that Joker's Wild. A stranger thing, that Jack Barry. Jack's career was almost ruined in the 1950s by the quiz show scandals of the era. He revived his career by buying a radio station. If the FCC felt he was of good enough character to own a station, then game show producers could trust him to host game shows again.

That wouldn't work these days, because the FCC obviously no longer considers character as a factor in granting broadcasting licenses. But character used to be a big deal.

The Joker's Wild in the early 1980s had a lot of interesting incidents. One day, a contestant named Miya accidentally broke the lever that activated the part of the game where you'd "face the Devil." One other time, Jack accidentally gave away the answer to a question as he was reading it, and he dramatically ripped up the piece of paper.

Jim Peck occasionally filled in for Jack Barry. One of the most infamous series Jim regularly hosted was Three's A Crowd - which was sort of like The Newlywed Game except that it also included the husband's secretary. Nobody liked being on the show, and the show was blamed for ruining many marriages. Jim even hated hosting it. During each commercial break, he just locked himself in his dressing room.

Anyway, as I was watching The Joker's Wild at my grandparents' house, I remember some Zesta crackers with cheese on them being dropped down between the cushions of the couch. They weren't found for years.

There were a couple hit records back then that I remember hearing on the AM radio in my parents' Horizon to and from these outings. One of them was "You're Only Lonely" by J.D. Souther. The other was the lost hit we're profiling today, "Three Times In Love" by Tommy James.

If the "yacht rock 30" countdown was around in 1979-80, Tommy's hit probably would have done very well on it. For that matter, J.D.'s record probably would have too. But I only ever heard that countdown in 1982, though Nicolette Larson was still charting on it then.

Tommy once claimed that his old record label - Roulette Records - owed him $30 to $40 million in royalties. Roulette was actually tied to the Mafia.

But his comeback hit of 1980 brings back tender memories of a happy time in life!

"The Captain Of Her Heart" by Double

1986 / #16

Rate Your Music score: 3.67 out of 5!

Good morning, Captain!

This is a weird one. I remember when this song was popular, everyone called it "Kroger music." At a time when my favorite station was playing rockers by Heart or Falco, Double's now-lost hit was likened to the easy listening fare you might have heard over the speakers at a supermarket.

The main difference with grocery music is that this tune had some vocals. It was something about how too long ago and too long apart, someone kept waiting for the captain of her heart. All the rest of the lyrics after the first chorus are about she couldn't wait another day for the captain of her heart. Man, was she ever waiting for the captain of her heart!

Let me guess. At the end of the song, she still couldn't wait another day for the captain of her heart.

This was actually softer than most music you heard in stores - even stores that tuned their radios to some of the softest stations in town. There was a small bookstore at the Newport Shopping Center that we occasionally visited, and even the music there wasn't as soft as this. This bookstore, incidentally, was the site of a funny incident in which someone cussed in public. One day, we were at this store, when a biker couple walked in. The man asked the clerk where the road atlases were, and the clerk directed the couple to the proper shelf. Then, with the road atlases staring him right in the face, the man said to his partner, "Nah, bullshit, they don't have any road atlases here!"

Anyway, back to Double. Their lost hit prompted an obvious parody: "Too long ago, too long apart, she couldn't wait another day for Captain Kangaroo." These new lyrics conjured an image of somebody with the maturity level of a small child pacing back and forth in the living room all day with the TV on, waiting for Captain Kangaroo to come on.

"Welcome To The Boomtown" by David & David

1986 / #37

Rate Your Music Score: 3.53 out of 5!

This memorable lost hit tells the grim story of how hard it was becoming to get by in America in those years. Guess what? Things are worse now.

I'm giving this song an entry because when I was in 8th grade, some classmates made a parody of it called "Welcome To The Boogertown." As the title suggests, this parody was about mucus. Best all, they wrote it down and gave it to me. Unfortunately, this paper disappeared around the time of the home invasions.

Everyone back then was obsessed with boogers. At the same school, I once sneezed into my hand and then slapped my hand on the wall outside the office (right next to the window where they sold school supplies). The hand-shaped mucus stain stayed on the wall for months.

Another thing like the aforementioned paper that has vanished over the years is some notes someone passed in religion class in high school that contained funny rhymes. One of them was, "Kenny Rogers hates the Dodgers." Another was, "Kenny Loggins laid a log right outside of Boss Hogg." Later, the student who passed that note asked, "Remember Boss Hogg?" How can anyone forget Boss Hogg?

As for the song in this entry, it has a rather interesting line that refers to a once-widespread restaurant chain: "Deals dope out of Denny's, keeps a table in the back." But the official lyric sheet calls it "Danny's." It was speculated that this was to keep Denny's restaurants from suing David & David.

Pick a booger. We got plenty to go around.

"Take The L" by the Motels

1982 / #52

Rate Your Music score: 3.36 out of 5!

I think it's hilarious that a song title that nobody understood in 1982 is now a common expression.

When I used to hear this song when I was 9, I thought it had something to do with the Chicago "L" - the rapid transit system in that city. We had gone on a family trip to Chicago the year before, and someone kept talking about how Chicago had an "L."

This was different from the Chicago trip many years later when we protested the Par-King by blowing bubbles through the straw in our sodas at a Denny's restaurant. That was the same trip where someone tried to buy bubble gum from a machine at Six Flags and discovered it was actually a jawbreaker. It was later likened to reaching into your pocket and thinking you found a $20 bill, only to find it's a used tissue.

Although I heard "Take The L" when it was a hit in 1982, I never saw the video until at least the following year, when MTV finally came to town. I noticed that in most of the Motels' videos, lead singer Martha Davis always looked like she was about to cry as she sang. It was only then that I figured out the song had nothing to do with the Chicago "L." It also inevitably led to new Sesame Street-related lyrics being promulgated in our family digs: "Take the L out of lover and it's Grover."

Just in the past few years, "take the L" has become a common phrase. It's what you say to somebody when they need to accept losing an argument, an election, a court case, or some competitive activity. It has nothing to do with the Motels song, the Chicago "L", or Grover.

"I'm Not The Man I Used To Be" by Fine Young Cannibals

1989 / #54

Rate Your Music score: 3.52 out of 5!

This is a blog for lost hits. But you can almost write an entirely separate blog just for lost hits that sound like the Bee Gees but aren't. We need a place to discuss "Sexy Eyes" by Dr. Hook and "Never Let Me Down" by David Bowie.

The lost hit we're profiling today surely fits the bill. When I first heard this tune on the radio on a cold, snowy, blustery evening in late 1989, I actually thought it was the Bee Gees. But it was the Fine Young Cannibals - the band from Birmingham, England, that gave us chart toppers like "She Drives Me Crazy."

Despite what someone at school thought, they weren't called the Five Young Cannibals, but the Fine Young Cannibals.

The band's lead singer Roland Gift is one of these men who appeared nude in some context despite being well-known mostly for something else. You see, Roland is also an actor. He once appeared nude in a romantic comedy film. But in a magazine interview, he said, "I wouldn't do it for the sake of it, and I wouldn't make a habit of it." In this regard, Roland is like John Hoyt, the actor who played Carl Kanisky's dad on Gimme A Break! When this sitcom was at its height of popularity, John reportedly posed nude for a calendar that showed elderly men in their birthday suits.

Let this sink in. John played Chief Kanisky's dad, so he was almost 80 when he posed nude. John said that when his pastor heard about this endeavor, "he laughed for half an hour."

John Hoyt was probably not the man he used to be, yet he posed nude for that calendar.

"Boys Do Fall In Love" by Robin Gibb

1984 / #37

Rate Your Music score: 3.17 out of 5!

"At the end of the day, making love to a paper moon..."

The late Robin Gibb was one of the Gibb brothers who was a member of the Bee Gees, and this great lost hit is another that has a rather unusual line that I thought had to be a misheard lyric but is actually real.

"At the end of the day, making love to a paper moon." No way in hell was that the real lyrics. I have a record of this tune, and every time I listened to it, I tried to figure out what Robin was really singing. But nowadays, with lyrics websites, we learn that those were the actual lyrics.

Robin, you're weird.

What is that line even supposed to mean? It sounds like something involving a prop for a high school dance. If that's what the dances at my school were like, I'm glad I didn't go to any of them. From what I've heard though, most of the dances consisted of people throwing tantrums over the outcome of the big basketball game and fighting with the DJ because he only played music that was 50 years old.

"Rebels" by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

1985 / #74

Rate Your Music score: 3.59 out of 5!

Hey hey hey! It's Fat Albert! Wait, actually it isn't. It's skinny Tom!

There's always some interesting stories behind Tom Petty's many hits, and "Rebels" is no exception. It came from the LP Southern Accents, which Tom originally planned as a concept album about his life in Gainesville, Florida. It was while he was recording "Rebels" that Tom got mad and punched a wall, breaking his hand.

Radio DJ's back then loved talking about Tom's tantrum. After hearing about it on the radio, I described it to a family member, who insisted I made it up. After hearing the same story on the radio later, they still insisted I made it up. I pointed out that the DJ had confirmed exactly what I had said, but my family member was adamant that this wasn't the case.

Tom wasn't some neo-Confederate dinosaur. He once said "Rebels" was actually about a character who blames all his problems on everyone else, when really the character created his own troubles. The fictional character in the song was a failure in life. Tom's fans have described the song as pure genius.

This lost hit also has a story that's quite like another entry we featured a while back. When our online museum of lost hits profiled "Overjoyed" by Stevie Wonder, I noted that DJ's on WCLU always called Stevie's record "The Ker-Plop-Plop Song." Similarly, I remember DJ's on a local station - probably WCLU again, but it could have been a different station - always referring to "Rebels" as "The Fat Albert Song" because of the "hey hey hey" refrain.

In the years since Tom's untimely death, his influence continues. Even the one-man band Five Times August often has a sound that seems influenced by Tom Petty. Five Times August is known for tracks like "Sad Little Man", a protest song against Anthony Fauci that has a hilarious video...

"One Good Reason" by Paul Carrack

1988 / #28

Rate Your Music score: 2.8 out of 5!

This lost hit features some of the strangest lyrics ever to appear in a top 40 record.

After the roaring intro, and after the booming beat kicks in, we're treated to these stirring opening lines...

I stand on my ground when we fight, no matter where we are
I am the sad clown with teared eyes, so I pee on your arm

By all accounts, those are the actual lyrics. I'm not even going to search for "official" lyrics, because everyone agreed those are the real words to the song.

Those are the sort of lyrics that if they appeared in a grunge or rap song 5 years later, people would have just laughed them off as something normal. But this was standard late '80s pop rock, so there was a bit of shock value surrounding those lyrics.

We know those are the real lyrics because of the reaction they once generated at a local shop. One evening - probably when I was a high school freshman - we went to some business at or near Newport Shopping Center. It was probably to get something for school. We had to make impromptu trips to buy stupid stuff for school all the time. This shop had Q-102 blaring loudly, and this song came on. When the opening lines were heard, a woman who was working there glanced at another employee and said, "Huh?" So I think it's safe to say Paul was indeed singing about urinating on a person's limb.

At least he sang about it artfully. Later songs might have used lyrics like this because people were out of ideas. But it seemed original back when Paul used these lines. There's also a small but meaningful pause before the final 3 words of the controversial line - as if to dramatize the point.

With the addition of this entry, it appears as if Paul Carrack is the first act with 3 entries on this blog. He actually has 4 if you count the fact that he was in Mike & the Mechanics.