"Desperate But Not Serious" by Adam Ant

1983 / #66

Rate Your Music score: 3.4 out of 5!

I don't know what made me think of this story just now, but I had to think of a lost hit whose title was evocative of the incident.

Let's go back to a few years before this song was a hit. I was about 6. I haven't thought about this story in such a long time. One evening, we were in the den. Somebody kept farting and stinking up the whole room. There were some real stinky ones. It was as hilarious as you might imagine.

But not everybody had a sense of humor. The angry reaction by a vocal few was met with more laughter. It was an endless cycle of laughs that provoked anger, which elicited yet more merriment.

Finally, a family member observed that all the flatulence meant somebody's "desperate juices" were acting up. Hence, I chose "Desperate But Not Serious" as the lost hit for this entry. Whoever was stinking up the den in this story was desperate but funny.

I had never heard anyone mention "desperate juices" before, and I haven't heard it since.

I remember around the same time, we all went to dinner at a restaurant in the Cincinnati suburb of Evendale. I thought this restaurant had good cornbread, but the rest of my family really loved this place. Anyway, that evening, someone ripped an air biscuit during our meal. Not long after that, we tried going to this eatery again, but - after driving an hour - we discovered it was permanently closed and replaced with something else.

As for Adam Ant, he's an interesting character. In 2002, he was involved in a widely publicized incident in which he threw a car alternator through the window of a pub, but the criminal charges were reduced to just a single count of causing affray. He has spoken candidly about the struggles he's had in life. He said his battles forced him out of art school many years earlier.

Mr. Ant also figured prominently in the Celebrity ABC Gum Project. In the late 1990s, someone had a website about how they mailed a stick of gum to numerous famous people and had asked them to chew it and mail it back. Adam Ant and John Waters were among the very few who obliged, though it seems like one other celebrity - maybe Don Ho - only sent back the wrapper.

"Freedom Overspill" by Steve Winwood

1986 / #20

Rate Your Music score: 3.24 out of 5!

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

And if you do think about it, you probably think about that ridiculous video that consists mostly of Steve holding his hand over his eye. It's like one of those exercises your eye doctor makes you do.

The clip also has a few other assorted scenes, such as Steve sitting in a chair in a featureless room. I always thought this scene made him look like he was ripping a silent-but-deadly and trying to hold in his laughter. At one point, he shifts his head downward as if to enjoy the stench.

Now, Steve was of course a fairly successful musician for years before. So much so that I was willing to protect Men At Work's territory from Steve even at a time when Steve had no chart hits. It appears that Steve did not have a single Hot 100 entry in 1983, which was Men At Work's heyday. But Steve had a couple of hits over the preceding few years (back when he looked like Conan O'Brien) that we still kept hearing all the time. Obviously, a station couldn't play two songs at once (unless they aired one in each stereo channel), so every time they played Steve Winwood, that was 3 to 4 minutes when they weren't playing Men At Work.

All the David Bowie, Eurythmics, Police, Michael Jackson, ZZ Top, Yes, and many others were seen as squeezing Men At Work off the airwaves. I let Eddy Grant, Dexys Midnight Runners, and Bonnie Tyler slide. But not Steve Winwood, even with his lack of current hits at the time.

Steve or no Steve, 1983 was actually one of the best years of music in the entire history of the record business, and I was a fool for not appreciating it. I can plead insanity, because 4th grade was such a disaster.

But after that, the finer things came shining through - at least until the next major crisis, of which there many starting in the mid-1980s.

"Keep On Walkin'" by CeCe Peniston

1992 / #15

Rate Your Music score: 3.42 out of 5!

It's time for some fond memories of warm summer days when I worked at the library!

Unfortunately, these fond memories weren't always so fond. "Keep on walkin'" is what we were told to do when we got assaulted by young neighborhood criminals. That's an exact quote too. Keep on walkin', the cops ain't talkin' to us anymore, because the criminals had so much pull.

Right, Philip?

The main reason I'm including this single in our online museum of lost hits is the video. I only saw the video once back then, and I burst out laughing when it got a little bit past the middle of the song. The humor begins at 3:22 with the "whoo! whoo! whoo!" part. CeCe sports a hilarious grin with each "whoo!"

It gets even funnier after a few seconds when the pitch gets higher. It looks like the video was just looped from the first part, so her mouth movements don't even line up with each "whoo!"

This isn't the only music video where a performer mugs for the camera like this and displays a ridiculously silly smile. Go West and Karla Bonoff provided similar amusement. Maybe we'll get to them someday.

Meanwhile, there's an assault case from 1992 that still needs to be filed. We can take our time, because there's no statute of limitations on felonies in Kentucky.

"One Lonely Night" by REO Speedwagon

1985 / #19

Rate Your Music score: 3.01 out of 5!

"One lonely night...One lonely night...That's all it takes to...Completely break you..."

This is one lost hit I hadn't forgotten, but I had forgotten everything about the video except lead singer Kevin Cronin with a long beard in a medieval setting. I also remember hearing the song on the car radio when we drove to Maysville one day.

Until recently, I thought everyone else had forgotten everything about this song. But I guess memories can be long in these parts, and some people remember.

A few months ago, during Thanksgiving weekend, we had an important family gathering. We had appetizers that included shrimp. As the number of shrimp dwindled to just one, these lyrics were heard: "One lonely shrimp...One lonely shrimp...That's all it takes to...Completely break you."

For a song that had hardly ever been heard in 40 years, it sure did elicit a clear recollection. I guess we're hoarders of music memories. I've always felt that top 40 stations should throw in a lost hit here and there, which actually did occur on some such stations, especially smaller ones. Yet it's a safe bet that the thought police on online forums about radio would call it "top 40 for hoarders." However, this sure beats "top 40 for wasters", which represents the throwaway attitude that has engulfed the format's most influential stations.

One lost hit...One lost hit...That's all it takes to...Completely break the brains of today's radio programmers.

"I Believe In You" by Stryper

1988 / #88

Rate Your Music score: 2.95 out of 5!

I'm pretty sure I heard this song in my day. Either that or I'm confusing it with "She Believes In Me" by Kenny Rogers.

The band Stryper was one of the few acts that performed Christian rock to reach the Hot 100. The Wikipedia article on Stryper cofounder Michael Sweet says, "The band's reputation declined in the 1990s." I'm not exactly sure what happened. Maybe they started biting heads off bats at concerts or something, but I'm not sure.

For a personal anecdote about Stryper, let's go back maybe a year or so before this song charted, back to when I was a high school freshman. I went to high school with some real punks. They were too old to be brats. They were punks. I don't mean it in a good way. They were juvenile delinquents. But they claimed to be good Christians, so that made it socially acceptable.

One of the worst offenders apparently liked Stryper. Now, the good thing about gym class was that we didn't wear our dumb school clothes for that class. So, for that class, this student always wore his Stryper t-shirt that had the number 777 prominently displayed. Get it? Instead of that devil number 666 - or the even more shocking 555 - Stryper used 777.

I think this student also sat right behind me in homeroom for 2 years, but gym class would always bring out the worst behavior in everyone. In gym, he was every bit as much of a troublemaker as you'd expect - and then some. I just don't remember much about what he did specifically. I just know it was bad.

I do remember a couple incidents in gym that show just how bad things were overall. One day, right in the middle of gym class, I saw a student emerge from the locker room carrying my school clothes, books, and other belongings. I don't remember if it was the same student discussed above. He proceeded to strew them all over the floor of the gym. I tried to stop him, and I got in trouble.

One other time, the teacher noted how bad everybody's behavior had become, so she required everyone to just sit on the floor and not do anything for the whole hour. We had to change into our gym clothes one by one instead of using the locker room all at the same time. At the end of the class period, we had to change back into our regular school clothes one by one. By the time we were all done changing into our gym clothes, it was time to start changing back into regular school clothes.

And much of the misbehavior was courtesy of a diehard Stryper fan!

"The Right Thing" by Simply Red

1987 / #27

Rate Your Music score: 3.16 out of 5!

Banned in Singapore! And this song didn't even have a single mention of chewing gum or not flushing toilets.

The government of Singapore deemed "The Right Thing" by the English group Simply Red so suggestive that it banned the entire album, prohibiting it from being sold at all. The song aired on MTV and many American radio stations without any trouble, but it was too much for a regime that was praised by George H.W. Bush and David Perdue. The Simply Red ban came several years before the island country outlawed the sale, import, and possession of chewing gum. That was also before schools in Newport, Kentucky, praised the regime in a project given to students.

But in 1992, a newspaper article said Simply Red performed the banned song at a concert in Singapore despite the prohibition. In order to be allowed to hold a concert, the band had to first submit to the government a list of songs that they were going to play. They left "The Right Thing" off that list. The article also said Color Me Badd gave a concert in Singapore that included their banned song "I Wanna Sex You Up."

A police spokesman vowed that "action will be taken" against both acts.

The initial Simply Red ban came years after Singapore outlawed jukeboxes, pinball machines, and long hair on men. In 1972, the government of Singapore instituted what it called Operation Snip Snip, in which men were required to cut their hair. Cliff Richard of all people was denied entry into the country because his hair was too long. Operation Snip Snip was tightened in 1974, as government agents conducted surprise inspections of workplaces to nab long-haired men.

They wasted all their tears. Wasted all those years.

"Hold Me" by Colin James Hay

1987 / #99

Rate Your Music score: 2.84 out of 5!

I can't believe Rate Your Music reviewers gave this great record only a 2.84. Anyone who gives this song less than a 5 out of 5 ought to be required to visit the toughest biker bar in town wearing a Metric Man costume. It's equally tragic that this single only spent one week in the Hot 100 - at #99.

Colin Hay is best known as the lead vocalist of Men At Work and one of the greatest guitarists around. I once traveled all the way to Toronto to see him perform - back before the Bush regime began requiring a passport just to reenter the United States. Four years after Men At Work's heyday, "Hold Me" was a minor solo hit for Colin.

When the song came out, I thought the video was absolutely hilarious. The clip consists of Colin sitting next to what appears to be a robot version of himself that has a distorted head that is capable of spinning. Finally, Colin punches the robot and knocks his noggin off. The robot catches the head in the palm of his hand. The head then spins around on the floor and flies through the air.

This song also reminds me of another lost hit by a big-name act that peaked below #90 on the Hot 100: "Dancing With The Mountains" by John Denver. But it's unmistakably Colin.

"Street Of Dreams" by Nia Peeples

1991 / #12

Rate Your Music score: 3.05 out of 5!

Is a hit record truly lost if you don't even remember that it existed?

There was a period of over 8 years when I listened to American Top 40 so religiously that there were very, very few top 40 hits that I simply couldn't remember even when I heard them on AT40 rebroadcasts years later. These included the now-lost hit "Jam Tonight" by Freddie Jackson and New Edition's remake of "Earth Angel." Nothing against these tunes, but for some reason, I simply could not recall them - even though each of them was in the top 40 for weeks. I had no recollection of them whatsoever. I couldn't remember them even existing.

There's also maybe 3 or 4 sleepy ballads that just barely scraped into the top 40 back then that I can't place how they sounded, but I remember them existing.

Now I've found an action-packed dance-pop number that made it all the way up to #12 during that 8-year timeframe that I simply don't remember at all - even though it charted much higher than the aforementioned tunes. I was looking at a chart for the last week before Billboard switched to its new Hot 100 formula in 1991. I got to #12 and I said to myself, "What?????"

I'm talking about "Street Of Dreams" by Nia Peeples. Again, I have nothing against this record. I simply don't even remember that it existed. I'm drawing a complete blank.

There was nothing in my personal life at the time that was any worse than what was usually going on. In fact, things were actually much better than they were a couple years before. So it's not like there's a big chunk of my memory that was wiped out by a crisis. And I know I heard Nia's tune, because it would have appeared on AT40 for weeks during the Shadoe Stevens era before the chart switchover.

When I saw Nia Peeples on the chart, I thought that might be the song that began, "I know you can control it, baby, know you can control it, baby, know you can control it, baby." I'm drawing a blank as to what that was, but I remember hearing it during a little Saturday drive in which I was angry about something.

Some folks say the change to the Hot 100 methodology made the chart more accurate. They may have had a case, except perhaps in one aspect: The new formula disproportionately reduced the influence of smaller cities. After that, the chart included less heartland rock, which was more popular among small-town venues. Heartland rockers were among our bread and butter at the time. Most of my pals lived in urban areas but enjoyed rural activities. In a recent interview, John Mellencamp backed up the claim that the new formula was weighted toward very large cities more than it should have been.

That change also the marks the start of what I call the second generation of lost hits, which accounts for some entries on this blog that cover music at least into the 2000s.

"The Only Way Out" by Cliff Richard

1982 / #64

Rate Your Music score: 3.22 out of 5!

Let me introduce you to a countdown show that I now call the "yacht rock 30."

This was a weekly top 30 countdown hosted by Bob Leonard that I heard back in 1982. It was almost wall-to-wall "yacht rock" - plenty of Michael McDonald, Hall & Oates, and Toto - plus some "yacht R&B" like Jeffrey Osborne. I don't remember it having any of the Human League or Men At Work that was conquering the Hot 100, as those acts were probably considered too dangerous for poor Bob.

Another name for "yacht rock" is Horizon music. I call it that because the oldsters always listened to this music in our flailing Plymouth Horizon. For several years, that was about the upper limit of what most AM stations in Cincinnati would play.

In the early rock 'n' roll era, Cliff Richard was marketed as Britain's version of Elvis Presley. But by the time the "yacht rock 30" aired, Cliff was as yacht as anyone else. This made the lost hit featured in this entry eligible to appear on Bob's countdown. Halloween fell on a Sunday that year, and I have a vague memory of hearing Cliff's hit on the countdown that day.

It turned out that Cliff is very religious. Even the lyrics to "The Only Way Out" sound somewhat religious. This brings us to a funny story about Cliff. For years, British TV hosts shared one goal in life: They wanted to get Cliff Richard to say the F-word on TV. The idea of someone as religious as him cussing on TV was considered too funny for words. Finally, they got him to say it. The clip used to be on YouTube, but I can't find it anymore.

There are recent reports that Cliff appeared on The View and got in a profanity-laced argument with Joy Behar, but that seems to be just a myth. I don't watch The View, so I wouldn't know. I have a life. But if this didn't happen, where did the story come from?

But I ain't losin' sleep. And I ain't countin' sheep.

"Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" by Sophie B. Hawkins

1992 / #5

Rate Your Music score: 3.55 out of 5!

This is another top 10 hit that seems to have completely faded from major venues. I haven't heard it on regular radio in about 30 years.

And it's a late example of Electric Company music - a characteristic that was otherwise almost nonexistent outside the 1970s.

The Electric Companying in this record begins in the second verse. Make no mistake, that's Electric Company music. If Dick Clark had put together a compilation album called That's Electric Company Music!, this song might be included.

However, Sophie's record - since it was in the space-age '90s - might use different instruments for Electric Companying than Elton John or Chuck Mangione used.

I have a funny story about this song that involves Power 94½ - or rather, the downfall of Power 94½. One evening, we were in Lexington for some reason. Power 94½ had just abandoned its successful format that it had for years, leaving its main competitor alone in the format. We couldn't pick up its competitor at home. As Billy Ray Cyrus would say, I got no invitation. I guess the FCC didn't bring it to me.

This competing station also didn't last much longer in the format, and Lexington actually didn't have another top 40 station for 4 years. That was the king of mass appeal formats, and for 4 years, about the only people satisfied by Lexington radio were those whose musical tastes were narrow enough to be served by niche formats. Cincinnati had the same problem to an extent, as Q-102 had softened so much.

During our trek through Lexington, we parked on the Power 94½ lot and tuned the car radio to its competitor. Then we blared it loudly enough for the Power peeps to hear us. The song on the radio was Sophie's now-lost hit that we're profiling in this entry.

I bet the Power peeps pooped their pantaloons!

This may have been the same day I set the VCR to tape a heavily promoted 2-hour Cops marathon off the TV because I wouldn't be home that evening, and I discovered it didn't tape because someone had toyed with the VCR settings.

"Mama Can't Buy You Love" by Elton John

1979 / #9

Rate Your Music score: 3.24 out of 5!

Ready for some Electric Company music?

That's what I call a certain sound that was all over the airwaves in the 1970s. I call it that because the same sound was used in the music beds on The Electric Company. It can best be described as a "wokka" sound. I didn't know how to spell that until a hilarious online troll posted about it some years ago. I'm not even sure what instruments create that sound. In fact, I think different instances of it used different instruments. It's not just a sound but a genre.

It should be a whole radio format! In the mid-1990s, WUBE-AM briefly had a format of old pop standards remade by then-current artists. A format of Electric Company music is no more niche than that.

Elton John came through on the Electric Company front. Listen to his lost hit we're profiling today. The Electric Companying begins about 21 seconds in. Wokka!

This song was big while I attended my enlightening summer class just before 1st grade. I remember hearing it on the radio in the Horizon as we were tooling up U.S. 27 near NKU. This was around the same time and same spot where I burst out laughing because we were behind a TANK bus where a passenger blew a humongous bubble with bubble gum.

As soon as the '80s came, that was the end of Electric Company music. A blink of an eye, and it was suddenly gone. Just like that. Reruns of The Electric Company aired throughout the '80s, but in the decade of MTV and new wave, The Electric Company seemed dated because of its music beds.

But Electric Company music made a fleeting reappearance in the '90s, which we'll cover in our next entry - another top 10 hit, no less!

"Superbowl Shuffle" by the Chicago Bears Shufflin' Crew

1986 / #41

Rate Your Music score: 2.39 out of 5!

During the 1985-86 NFL season, the Chicago Bears seemed to be trying to lay claim as "America's team." They ended the regular season with a smashing 15-1 record, and everyone knew they were well on their way to play in Super Bowl XX.

So, not long before the big game, the Bears recorded this charity single that had a hip-hop beat. The team had built such a strong national following that the record was played on the radio all over the country and managed to peak just one notch shy of the nationwide top 40. Profits from the record were donated to an organization that helped needy Chicago area families.

After "Superbowl Shuffle" was released, the Bears went on to destroy the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX at the Louisiana Superdome. That was the Super Bowl that had the Up with People halftime show where the guy wearing ridiculous clothes sang the Huey Lewis song "The Power Of Love"...

I had thought he also wore fluorescent suspenders, but I must have been thinking of someone else.

After that was when I started being forced to attend a terrible Catholic school for the rest of 7th grade. During the spring was the 8th graders' variety show. This was a live performance that the class gave for the entire school and community. One of the skits consisted of some of the 8th grade girls wearing football jerseys and dancing to "Superbowl Shuffle." The entire show was G-rated, yet somehow, it was too much for the ultraconservative citizenry of Cold Spring, Kentucky, to handle. A year later, when I was in 8th grade, the school refused to let us have a variety show. They said it was because spring was a time solely for reflection, and that the previous year's show had offended the community. It is believed that the "Superbowl Shuffle" segment provoked much of the outrage. I don't see how it was offensive at all.

When our show was canceled, some of my 8th grade classmates begged me to write a petition to have it reinstated. But the rest of the time, they kept harassing me. Oops, there went their petition. They harassed me, and they lost their variety show. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

In 2014 - almost 30 years after "Superbowl Shuffle" was recorded - some of the Bears players who performed on the record sued the company that held the license to the song, rightly saying the proceeds should continue to go to charity. It's sad that even charities are no longer safe from the greed of companies that try to rip them off.

"Winds Of Change" by Jefferson Starship

1983 / #38

Rate Your Music score: 3.4 out of 5!

Here's a lost hit from the band that was always changing corporation names: "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now." Just joking! If you don't understand why "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" shouldn't be on a lost hits blog, ask an adult.

Anyway, back in 1983, Jefferson Starship charted with the energetic rocker we're profiling in this entry: "Winds Of Change." The title was evocative of several other things that were going on at the time. It happened to be around the same time ABC aired the miniseries The Winds Of War. The title of the song and the miniseries both inspired a project I had at the time.

This was right when I started making up tasteless Sesame Street fanfic. At first, I came up with a storyline called "Sesame Street In Hell", in which all the characters were killed off pretty quickly. Then I came up with a new storyline called "The Winds Of Sesame Street." This storyline was much more elaborate, and it went on for at least a year. This was the one in which Big Bird's feathery tail was amputated and was found floating in outer space. Also in this storyline, Bert started a toilet paper factory. He-Man visited the show and was somehow chopped up into small pieces, prompting Gordon to put him back together with Scotch tape. Men At Work visited too, and they gave a concert where they used Grover's head as a drum.

I think I came up with the title for this storyline one windy day in early spring of that year when we were playing at the end of the street and found a pile of drywall someone had discarded. We used the drywall to draw pictures of Ernie and Bert on the street. We also wrote, "Mister Softee is a softhead," a reference to the ice cream truck that often came along.

Also around that time, a bratty neighborhood kid kept calling everyone an "Ernie-and-Bert-butt." I think he later went on to threaten to kill a local prosecutor and a judge.

"It's Raining Again" by Supertramp

1982 / #11

Rate Your Music score: 3.4 out of 5!

"Come on, you little fighter..."

Let's talk about Dungeons & Dragons.

I was 8 the first time I heard of Dungeons & Dragons, but I didn't really know what it was. I knew it was a game, but I didn't know it was anything so involved. I was maybe 9 when my brother buyed a Dungeons & Dragons set. I think it was from a yard sale but hadn't been opened yet. It was as if some kid had purchased it before and their parents made them get rid of it right away. This set came with chits - the small pieces of paper they used because there was a dice shortage. The only people who really liked chits were prison inmates, because many prisons did not allow dice, as prisoners might use them to gamble.

I kept calling the game "Dumbgeons & Dragons" to see if it would provoke a reaction. I discovered pretty quickly though it's actually a pretty interesting game.

I think this was before we got Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Back then, we had just plain old Dungeons & Dragons. So it would have been before we had the Monster Manual whose cover had a creature that was half horse and half Michael McDonald.

Anyway, we had an ongoing game of Dungeons & Dragons going on. This particular campaign featured several non-player characters who liked to upstage the player characters. Right around that time, the lost hit by Supertramp that we're featuring in this entry blasted up the music chart.

This song contained a line that was of note: "Come on, you little fighter." I thought it had something to do with the fighter character class in Dungeons & Dragons. It actually sounded like a playground taunt. "Come on, you little fighter! I'm a big, tough magic-user, and I can kick your ass any day!" I bet they're "armed with Ajax" too.

One is almost inclined to think the band intended the line as a taunt. The lyrics of Supertramp's classic rock staple "Bloody Well Right" seem to be talking down to those who complain about how miserable life is. Sometimes it's justifiable to call out complainers, such as boards of directors of hospitals that whined that their hospital was full after they did absolutely nothing to add more beds - when they had years to do so. They had lots of complaints but no solutions. I got so sick of that word can't. Can't, can't, can't. That's all I ever heard. They complained more than the Whiners, a couple that appeared on Saturday Night Live. But most of the time, I love it when people complain. Even the word complain sounds like it's complaining.

Come on, you little fighter!

"What About Love" by 'til tuesday

1986 / #26

Rate Your Music score: 3.55 out of 5!

I have a knack for innovation and thinking outside the box.

When I was 13, I copied down the characters from a children's book, and spent most of the fall setting aside each day to mimic the misbehavior of a particular young character. They each had a specialty, such as cutting photos out of perfectly good books, tracking mud everywhere, acting up in school, or losing things. I think I even started writing an Atari BASIC game based on this.

I think this is what led me to act up at a younger cousin's birthday party at McDonald's. I stuck tape on a light bulb over a table, causing it to melt onto the table. I shot straw paper at some old man. I filled the toilet with tissue paper. Other than that, I didn't do anything that bad. I got in trouble though. These days, the school system would connive with the McDonald's to ban students from the restaurant, even though this event had nothing to do with school. But when I was growing up, this was a free country - usually. Well, sort of.

I think the character in the book who tracked mud everywhere may have been what inspired me to get mud all over my shoes at recess at school and track it all over the building. I also kept a muddy brick in my desk for months.

Music can be a snapshot in time. These days, Billboard's Hot 100 is dominated by Christmas or even Halloween oldies for half the year. Last fall, Billboard tightened the rules as to how long a track could stay on the chart if it was below a certain position, but inexplicably said this change wouldn't apply to seasonal songs. But in 1986, records zipped up and down the chart with dispatch. And 'til tuesday - as with a-ha, the band's name was usually written in all lowercase - came through!

I don't ever remember seeing the video for the enjoyable lost hit profiled in this entry until YouTube came along. When I first saw it, it looked like lead singer Aimee Mann had a big, long column of mucus dangling out of her nose at 2:36. But it's actually a strand of hair.

I'm looking over my shoulder for more lost hits!

"Do Me Baby" by Meli'sa Morgan

1986 / #46

Rate Your Music score: 3.1 out of 5!

Let's talk about Sly Fox.

After I was expelled from a public school in 7th grade, I attended a Catholic school that spring. It was a disaster from day one.

My literature teacher was an elderly, diminutive nun who resembled Emma Tisdale, the motorcycle-riding mail carrier on The Dukes Of Hazzard. I think she retired from teaching at the end of the school year.

One day, we had a class discussion on popular music. Students were supposed to name titles of songs that were big at the time. Inevitably, someone mentioned Sly Fox's big hit "Let's Go All The Way." Even more inevitably, snickers reverberated throughout the classroom when this title was uttered.

According to all sources, there was nothing suggestive about that song. Wikipedia says the title is actually "a message of encouragement." Nothing racy about it.

When the old nun heard everyone laughing, she frowned. She hoped that the title really wasn't anything naughty. Because if it was, "that's outright pornography!"

Think how she would have reacted to another song that was popular right at the same time - which is the lost hit we're profiling today, "Do Me Baby" by Meli'sa Morgan. The title and lyrics were obviously more risqué than Sly Fox's hit. I can just see Simon Leis raiding radio stations that played this song, or Citizens for Community Values following people around in record stores and writing down their license plate number if they purchased the record.

It must have gone over the censors' heads, because I don't remember anyone picketing the advertisers of stations that played the record. But some of these advertisers would have been hard to picket, as they weren't all local businesses. This was around the time the Army advertised heavily on local stations with their "Be all that you can be" campaign. At the time, the Army had a commercial that ended with a sergeant talking to a young soldier who was going off to college after his tour of duty...

"Know what I want you to do?"

"What's that, sergeant?"

"Graduate!"

I always made fun of this ad by replacing that last line with "Kill yourself!"

Prince is credited as the writer of "Do Me Baby." When Prince became really popular, I was warned that most of his songs were "dirty." But Prince's bassist André Cymone has claimed to be the song's actual writer.

I don't remember if "Rock Me Amadeus" or "Beat's So Lonely" prompted any snickering during that classroom exercise.

"Dreamtime" by Daryl Hall

1986 / #5

Rate Your Music score: 3.18 out of 5!

"You're living in dreamtime, baby...You wanna run away...It's time to wake up..."

I had Kermit the Frog for my 8th grade science teacher.

Seriously, my 8th grade science teacher looked just like Jim Henson did circa 1967. And his voice sounded exactly like Kermit the Frog!

And he had a temper! He was a good teacher, but man, did he have a temper! I apparently missed one of his best tantrums though, which reportedly took place when I was out of the room to deliver a note to the office. On the other hand, people shouldn't have been trying to get a rise out of him either.

His classroom was right next to the supply room where I poured nickel sulfide in the drain.

Anyway, this teacher once reportedly delivered an angry lecture in which he borrowed a line from this big solo hit by Daryl Hall. According to this legend, a student was dozing off in class, so the instructor became angry and declared, "You're living in dreamtime! It's time to wake up!"

I don't know if that actually was a real quote from my science teacher, or if it was just someone doing an impression of him. It sounds exactly like the sort of thing he would have said though. This is like how a line from a Duran Duran song was attributed to my high school principal.

"Dreamtime" became a lost hit pretty much right when it fell of the chart. I was amazed by the fact that you never heard it anymore. For peaking way up at #5, it sure did disappear from radio quickly. As local radio was entering its own doldrums around the time this tune became lost, my interest in lost hits heightened, and my frustration grew at the narrowing of playlists. I think this is when the 15-second mind became the norm.

Many years later, something funny appeared on YouTube. A high school class somewhere posted a video they made for a school project. The video was a humorous exposé about kids getting in trouble for chewing gum at school. I'm pretty sure the school was in the United States, but the closing music of the video was "Dreamtime" that someone had recorded in a different language. I couldn't understand the words, but the song was very clearly "Dreamtime."

It's time to wake up!

"Need A Little Taste Of Love" by the Doobie Brothers

1989 / #45

Rate Your Music score: 3 out of 5!

"Need a little taaaaaste..."

Whooooo, man! If you went to my high school, you know exactly where this is headed!

What words rhyme with taste? Let's see, there's waste, raced, spaced, chaste, defaced, posthaste, paste. Hmm. Can we think of any others?

That's right.

Everyone called this song "Need A Little Baste Of Love."

What great timing the Doobies had to release this single just as we were starting a new school year at my high school. This meant we were subjected to endless repetitions of a slightly off-color spoof of the chant from the song's second verse: "Need a little baaaaaste..."

This was also just after I went on a family trip to St. Louis where I kept hearing a radio commercial that sang, "Don't baste your barbecue." Throughout the trip, I kept having to hold in my laughter over this jingle.

Also, if you're a little surprised that the Doobie Brothers were still around in 1989, remember that was the year of the comeback for big 1970s acts. The Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Joe Cocker, Poco, and Donny Osmond also had substantial chart hits then.

"He's A Liar" by the Bee Gees

1981 / #30

Rate Your Music score: 3.11 out of 5!

The Bee Gees always seemed like the ultimate nice guys. But they could be real badasses when they wanted to.

Back when Michael Jackson was at his commercial peak, I noticed that nobody ever talked about the Bee Gees anymore. The Brothers Gibb did have a few minor hit songs then, but it was nothing like before. I wondered aloud if Michael would soon fall into such obscurity, but somehow, people never stopped talking about him. The Bee Gees rule and there's no point in arguing. But the lost hit we're profiling in this entry came during the group's relative lull in commercial success.

The group is best known for their electrifying Saturday Night Fever work. The whole world danced to the likes of "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever." But "He's A Liar" was a very different animal. Some reviewers said the song was just too bitter and confrontational for the Bee Gees. But the tune was a concerted effort to move away from disco. Also, Living Eyes - the album that included "He's A Liar" - was the first LP ever recorded on CD for demonstration purposes.

This song also yielded one of the funniest misheard lyrics I can remember. The real line is, "Well, they told me I fell but I just don't remember." But I used to think the song went, "Well, you sold me your bell bottoms but I just don't remember." This isn't the only misheard lyric regarding anything resembling pants, as Dr. Hook knows.

"Think Of Laura" by Christopher Cross

1983 / #9

Rate Your Music score: 2.69 out of 5!

Even the most high-energy radio stations smuggle tame ballads onto the airwaves. But it's an easier pill to swallow if it's treated as a novelty.

This brings to mind a feature that peopled local radio in 1985. Each weekday evening, not long before the station's nightly signoff, Joey T of WCLU gave us the "Mellow Yellow Combo." Two songs - usually ballads - were played in each installment. It was where the station relegated all the Dan Hill and Air Supply. Joey would introduce each "Mellow Yellow Combo" by singing, "They call me Mellow Yellow...Oh yes, oh yes, it's extra, extra sickening!"

Joey proceeded to heap industrial-strength ridicule on each record in the combo. Not all of the songs he featured were really wimpy ballads, but they weren't blazing rockers either. I remember some ABBA and Gino Vannelli making it onto the "Mellow Yellow Combo."

This must have inspired my own choice of music years later when I was on WRFN, the carrier current station at Northern Kentucky University. Probably 95% of what I played was energetic rockers. But I had to make an occasional exception, and when I did, that's when the real fun took place. As Steve Hawkins of Q-102 used to say, "I don't cool off very often, but when I do it's dynamite stuff!"

One afternoon, I wanted to slip in one of the mellowest hit ballads of the 1980s - just for shits and giggles. That tune was Christopher Cross's "Think Of Laura." I thumbed through the record rack in the studio and found the album jacket emblazoned with a pink flamingo. Why, it was our old friend Christopher Cross! The record, not the flamingo.

When I aired this song, I really didn't even need to say much about it. That I played it at all spoke for itself.

I may have a tape of this broadcast buried somewhere, but if I remember correctly, all I needed to say to bring a reaction was 3 little words: "Here's Christopher Cross."

Now the thing about this was that WRFN was heard over speakers in the hallway. There were some guys hanging out in the lounge and walking through the hall as I was on the air. As soon as the 3 dreaded words were spoken, I heard one of them in the hall yell out, "Oh no!"

He was loud enough that I could hear him through the booth at the station. Best all, his outburst went out over the air.

This differed from many of our other local stations in that they actually expected to be taken seriously when they played ballads all the time.

"Point Of No Return" by Nu Shooz

1986 / #28

Rate Your Music score: 3.44 out of 5!

What is the point of no return?

You probably know what the phrase means, but what is the point of no return for society, politics, and life?

In aviation, the phrase refers to the point at which an airplane doesn't have enough fuel to return to where it departed from and must continue to its destination - like passengers paid it to do. So if someone says "poop" during a flight from Cincinnati to Honolulu, and they're over the Pacific Ocean, the plane has no choice but to continue the flight instead of going back home. Regardless of where the plane lands, the TSA will be waiting there to arrest the offending passenger for air piracy.

When did American politics pass the point of no return? You might say it was the 1988 "election." Eight years of Ronald Reagan's terror was probably survivable for most Americans. But adding even a single week of George H.W. Bush was too much.

I had thought of my personal point of no return as being when I was expelled in 7th grade and being forced to attend a school that was even worse. I had thought I could have survived what had taken place up until then, and that this event is what really dug us in deep. Remembering a bit more, however, the point of no return had to have been at least a few months earlier, when people started coming to my home and trying to fight me over things that happened at school. Maybe it was when the harassing phone calls started picking up.

Our major universities passed the point of no return when they decided to remake themselves as exclusive institutions instead of serving the mainstream public. Sesame Street was a great show in my day, but even it passed the point of no return during its disastrous 51st season.

The point of no return isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes it's a good thing, like when it breaks some barrier or taboo. For example, a judge lecturing a defendant about flatulence opens the floodgates for people who hold dignified positions discussing gross bodily functions. When I was about 9, I came up with a proverb to represent shattering taboos like this: "Once it's in the box, it stays in the box." I knew what a proverb was, because The Joker's Wild had a category on proverbs, and the Bible was full of them. I came up with this wise saying when I was collecting pieces of discarded food which I called "cultures" and wanted to add a booger. I placed the booger in a small box instead of gluing it to a paper grocery bag. When my mom found out and made me throw away all my "cultures", I responded with my new proverb.

The funniest thing about the "cultures" is that my folks knew for about a year that I was collecting decaying pieces of food, but I didn't have to throw it away until I tried to save a booger.

"Tears" by John Waite

1984 / #37

Rate Your Music score: 2.97 out of 5!

"I'll see those tears...The damage they do..."

John Waite was one of these acts who actually looked like an '80s lost hit song. Best all, this record was a hit smack-dab in the middle of the timeframe that we try to focus on the most. This moment in time is stuck in my head, largely for personal reasons.

John's song also prompted new lyrics from a schoolmate. When I was in 6th grade, a stoner at school - who was about 5 years older than all his classmates - parodied the chorus of this tune. He kept singing, "I'll see those tears...The damaged Quaaludes."

I'm sure he would have shed lots of tears if someone damaged his Quaaludes. Kids at school damaged my belongings all the time too - if they didn't steal them.

"Blue Jean" by David Bowie

1984 / #8

Rate Your Music score: 3.25 out of 5!

You'd think a top 10 hit wouldn't be lost, but David Bowie was so sparse on our major local radio stations that it's as if we can deduct 30 notches from the chart peak of each of his mid-'80s singles. David is also one of these acts who I didn't fully appreciate in the days when it seemed like everyone (even performers who had no chart hits at the time) seemed to be competing against Men At Work for chart success.

But there's a story behind "Blue Jean." It happened in 6th grade when I was in the gifted class one day a week. I think we were at the table with the microscopes, but this wasn't the same day someone broke the microscope slides by running them under hot water. Also, I'm not sure if it was the same day I tried going to my regular classes instead but got caught.

Anyway, I made up a humorous song that I kept singing to myself. I think this was the one that went, "Poo-poo is fun to eat...It's the all-around extraordinary breakfast treat." In any event, I was quietly singing it to myself at the microscope table. Then a girl sitting in the seat next to me started snickering and asked, "Are you singing 'Blue Jean'?"

Whatever I was singing, it sounded nothing like "Blue Jean." The melody sounded more like Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown."

Also, I never really understood the "Blue Jean" video, but that's true of a lot of music videos of the time, although music videos were at their peak then.

When you saw David Bowie in the header for this entry, you were probably hoping most of it would be about the guy who looked like David Bowie talking about "elimination" because someone shit on the school bus, but I'm sorry to disappoint you.

"Sugar Daddy" by the Thompson Twins

1989 / #28

Rate Your Music score: 3.28 out of 5!

I had to include more Thompson Twins on this blog just as a matter of principle. If you could draw a picture of a 1980s lost hit, it would look like the classic lineup of the Thompson Twins from the mid-'80s when they were a trio.

But by the time this lost hit was released, the Thompsons were down to just a duo. This single was also their last Hot 100 appearance. It's hard to believe Glen Campbell's last chart hit was 25 years after that of the Thompson Twins, but it's also hard to believe that a jail inmate's quip about "anti-smiling laws" later came true, so I guess life is full of surprises.

It's important to understand some basics about the Thompson Twins situation - and about other music that was popular during the Thompsons' mid-'80s heyday. It was truly a sight to behold. People were completely spoony over it. It set the standards for all of society. Nothing like that exists today. Folks invested heavily in the swag of their favorite music acts. They Thompson Twinned, and they Thompson Twinned some more.

Now, about "Sugar Daddy." Sugar Daddy was also the name of a candy that you almost never saw except when you went trick-or-treating on Halloween. It apparently still exists, but I can't remember the last time I saw it. The only time I saw Sugar Daddy anywhere other than trick-or-treating was one time in elementary school when they gave us this candy for a special occasion. Predictably, kids fought over each other's Sugar Daddy.

And this candy took a damn long time to devour, because it was so chewy and sticky - even more so than bubble gum. You'd always find clumps of it stuck between your teeth 5 hours later. A Reddit commenter said, "They take too long to finish either way and the payoff isn't enough to justify it. They're tasty, but not enough so to justify the work to eat them." Someone on Facebook said she once got in trouble for letting a Sugar Daddy melt on the back seat of her parents' car.

I'm sure that this candy has also resulted in scenarios that were just as hilarious as the time in 2nd grade when we got caramel-covered apples on a field trip and some kid let huge hunks of apple fall off his teeth and onto the floor and seat of the school's van.

"Symptoms Of True Love" by Tracie Spencer

1988 / #38

Rate Your Music score: 2.7 out of 5!

Let's talk about American Top 40. In my day, AT40 was hosted by Casey Kasem and later by Shadoe Stevens - both of whom were legends. From its 1970 debut until 1991, this radio program counted down the top 40 of Billboard's weekly Hot 100 singles chart, which was compiled from record sales and radio station playlists. AT40 and the Hot 100 were also special because of the way they were woven into each other.

For much of my youth, I moved all the heavens to listen to American Top 40 every Sunday. And my parents absolutely hated it. Hated, hated, hated it! Or at least that was the impression I got. I'm not sure if they hated the show itself that much, but they hated the fact that I devoted so much interest to it. One time in the mid-1980s, when I was about 11, my mom warned me that I couldn't let my life "revolve around" AT40.

There was a period of a couple years around that time when I had several running gags that involved a significant chunk of the music industry. That timeframe was also one of the high water marks of pop radio.

Fast-forward to 1988. I was still an AT40 fan. But the tables were turned! For weeks on end, my parents decided they weren't going to let me listen to AT40. But by then, I was absolutely fed up, so I devised a way to catch this great program and not miss any of it.

How did I accomplish this?

I made sure to clear my bottom drawer so a boom box would fit snugly therein. I had stockpiled a few blank cassettes. I turned the volume all the way down on the boom box as it was tuned to AT40 - so nobody would know it was on - and recorded the show onto tape. Each cassette held 30 minutes per side, so every half-hour, I'd sneak into my room and change the tape. At night, after I had supposedly gone to bed, I listened to AT40 off of cassette - with the volume down very low so I wouldn't get caught.

It was like the RC Cola commercials where people had to smuggle RC into prison or hide it from the KGB.

The lost hit profiled in this entry was by 12-year-old Tracie Spencer from Waterloo, Iowa. It scraped into the top 40 during some of the weeks in which I carried out the above plan. In fact, I think AT40 was the only place I ever heard this song. There were getting to be more and more top 40 hits that I didn't hear anywhere except the countdown, thanks to the narrowing of radio playlists and the minds that compiled them.

I don't think my folks banned me from listening to AT40 again after that timeframe. I guess they got it out of their system. I think somehow they eventually discovered that I had taped the program when I wasn't allowed to - but that wasn't until years later, after the statute of limitations had run out.

"Button Off My Shirt" by Paul Carrack

1988 / #91

Rate Your Music score: 3.38 out of 5!

"You'd be overreacting if you think that I still hurt..."

If Peter Wolf is like the patron saint of lost hits, Paul Carrack would be like a venerable.

This tune was a rare highlight of 1988. As is usual when Paul Carrack is involved, there's lots to say about it. And it's not just because the album sleeve appears to show Paul urinating.

The song was so well-liked that someone once called up Power 94½ to declare that it was the "best song" they ever heard - but they inserted another word between "best" and "song." I never heard the particular DJ who was on the air that evening again.

I think someone in high school had the LP on cassette. Maybe it was a different LP by someone else, but I think it was this one. One day, the tape was sitting on a table at lunch. The principal saw the list of songs on it, and he asked, "These are songs?" These tracks had such unbelievably wacky titles as "Don't Shed A Tear" and "When You Walk In The Room."

"Button Off My Shirt" is also notable because it uses the word overreacting. I heard that word a lot, because I was always accused of "overreacting" to adverse situations, even though I actually underreacted. It went something like this...

"Today at school, somebody punched me in the face, so I said, 'Please don't punch me in the face anymore.'"

"TIM, YOU'RE OVERREACTING!!!!!!!!!!"

The song also had a version by Ronnie Milsap that was a big hit on country stations...

Now you know the legend of one of the greatest songs to fill the airwaves in 1988!

"Feels So Good" by Chuck Mangione

1978 / #4

Rate Your Music score: 3.38 out of 5!

This jazzy instrumental was a big hit back in 1978 but never gets any airplay on regular radio now. And when I say regular radio, I mean FM or AM broadcasting like we had in 1978. We don't call it "terrestrial radio." We just call it radio. Radio is what comes out of a radio.

As Chuck's record was one of very few instrumentals to be such a success in 1978, it prompted an obvious joke: Whenever someone mentioned "Feels So Good", somebody would inevitably ask, "Who sings it?" I also remember hearing the track emanating from a speaker when I was on a giant slide (the kind where you sit on a "magic carpet") at some park.

I also recall being at my grandparents' house and seeing Chuck perform this tune live on TV. It was widely noted in the media that Chuck pressed the wrong valve on his flugelhorn as he was playing, but a flugelhorn is a very hard instrument to play, so there was sure to be some spontaneity like this - even from a talented musician such as he.

In my entry on "Runner" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, I talked about how I had a funny dream in which the Manfreds' lead singer Chris Thompson attacked me in an online post. I have a similar story about Chuck Mangione. In 2017, I had a hilarious dream in which I was watching a TV show where Chuck was performing. During the performance, he blew a bubble with bubble gum through his flugelhorn.

After I posted about this online, a friend commented that Chuck's signature tune was an example of a genre of music that was particularly popular in the 1970s: Electric Company music. That term actually has a real meaning. It's not one of these terms like "yacht rock" or "bubble gum" that is applied to certain songs or acts but you don't know what the origin of the term is. Electric Company music is a style of music that sounds like the funky music beds that were used on The Electric Company. Maybe in a future entry, I'll explore how that sound suddenly went away as soon as the 1980s hit.

"Hold Me 'Til The Mornin' Comes" by Paul Anka

1983 / #40

Rate Your Music score: 2.6 out of 5!

Look out. It's Paul Anka!

When I first heard this ballad, I thought it was by Chicago. That's because it included backing vocals by Peter Cetera. In fact, I'm not even sure if those are backing vocals. It sounds like Peter practically sang the chorus and ending himself.

Suffice it to say, not everyone is a fan of this tune. A reviewer on Rate Your Music opined, "I can't believe this shit charted."

I don't know if I ever heard this record on our top 40 stations except on American Top 40. My biggest exposure to this song was of course from a format that had many more stations: adult contemporary, which at the time was the latest development in what was once called a middle-of-the-road format. There were gobs of these stations. I couldn't avoid them, because my parents usually controlled the car radio. Occasionally they relented, but our crumbling Plymouth Horizon seemed almost synonymous with the big MOR stations on Cincinnati AM radio like WLW and WKRC.

Paul's lost hit dredges up memories of the Saturdays of the era that we wasted on a rather pointless endeavor. This actually lasted for years after. In the later years, it was occasional weekday evenings that were monopolized by this silliness, but around 1983, it was usually Saturdays that were afflicted. It wasn't the worst thing in the world - especially compared to school and church - but I felt like it didn't accomplish much either.

This series of outings contributed to some running jokes that we had. It actually kicked off my renewed attention to Sesame Street after I had outgrown the show.

I don't want to go into detail about the aforementioned undertaking in this entry, because you'd think there was something wrong with us that prompted it. I've alluded to this venture before, and it wasn't really anything that disastrous. Later, when our proprietors didn't get the answers they wanted, they shopped around until they did, which yielded incalculably bad results. But the entities we encountered circa 1983 were rather benign.

On those particular Saturdays, we would sometimes also do other things, like see a movie or visit electronics shops. We also ate lunch at restaurants. I remember one such eatery that held promise. I thought it was funny because of the remote Sesame Street connection: The name of the restaurant was the same as that of a character played by an actor who also appeared on Sesame Street.

This establishment opened to much fanfare. At first glance, it seemed to be a real showcase. The restaurant offered a smorgasbord format, and we kiddos got complimentary tokens for the video game arcade it had. Later accounts say it was known for its skillet-fried chicken and its meatloaf, but I don't remember those. I seem to recall a large room you could enter where a cook prepared and directly served food, but I might be confusing that with a post someone made on a message board I used to have on my website describing how a cook's nose ran onto some food.

Unfortunately, I found much of the food at this restaurant to be thoroughly inedible. Not long after, it was repeatedly sued for allegedly serving tainted food. Then it was reportedly shut down by the health department.

And Paul Anka brings back memories of the entire era!

"Walking On A Thin Line" by Huey Lewis & the News

1984 / #18

Rate Your Music score: 3.37 out of 5!

According to numerous sources, this rocker is about a Vietnam War veteran's struggles with readjusting to regular life. This is among the more serious songs to reach the top 40 at the time.

It also generated a story that's been embedded in family lore for 40 years. This anecdote centers on the line, "Taught me how to shoot to kill." The line is immediately followed by a gunshot sound effect. One day, this song came on the radio. When the gunshot was heard, my brother held out his index finger to mimic firing a gun. In doing so, he somehow poked me in the eye.

According to legend, he then declared, "That's what you get for existing." Pure genius!

Maybe I should have worn goggles around the house to avoid dangers like that. We probably should have all worn gas masks too, judging by the stories surrounding the "Rumbleseat" and "Can't Stop" entries.

"Half The Way" by Crystal Gayle

1979 / #15

Rate Your Music score: 3.16 out of 5!

Hearing this song brings back memories of a 1979 trip in which we visited relatives near Philadelphia for Thanksgiving. I think this track was even on the car radio the night the Horizon broke down in Maryland and we played with the Speak & Spell while stranded at a Boron station.

Throughout the trip, I kept snickering when this song came on, because it used the word overflowing, a word that was associated with toilets. When I started working on this entry, however, "Half The Way" brang back a particular recollection from that trip that I forgot about for 45 years.

We stayed with relatives through much of this trip. One day, we played in the woods adjoining their back yard. For some reason, I discarded part of an orange popsicle in the woods when nobody was looking. I don't know why. Maybe I just thought it was funny. More likely, it had been reduced to a state in which the remainder was not retrievable for consumption, or the wooden stick ruined the taste. This wasn't like in high school when kids kept throwing popsicles on the floor at lunch after taking only one bite. They were being wasteful just for the sheer hell of it.

When I think about the popsicle episode, "Half The Way" plays in my mind.

At least I got the mischief rating up for that trip!

In the years after, Crystal Gayle's floor-length hair prompted questions from radio shock jocks asking how she was able to go to the bathroom. These questions lingered even into the Reddit era.