This blog profiles lost hits - songs that reached the pop chart that you never hear anymore. I plan to focus on records that made Billboard's legendary Hot 100 chart between the late 1970s and today but seem to no longer receive any play on radio, on the music system at Kroger, or elsewhere.
I'm not sure why they're lost while you still hear other hits from the same era 10 times an hour. Some lost hits deserve to be lost, but others should be held up as the greatest masterpieces ever recorded. I've noticed the lost hits phenomenon for as long as I've been old enough to reach the radio. Believe it or not, I actually have records, cassettes, CD's, or MP3's of many lost hits. This interest reached its stride in the early 1990s when I visited record stores and buyed whole stacks of used 45's. This blog is also a monument to the days when the future of 7-inch singles seemed forever assured.
Where did I originally hear so many songs that are now lost? I usually first heard them on the radio. The top 40 stations in Cincinnati that I remember the most are WKRQ (Q-102) and WCLU. I lived far south enough that I could also pick up Lexington's WLAP-FM (Power 94½). There were also venues like American Top 40 and MTV.
Those were by far our main music outlets, but not the only. For a time in my youth, I also listened to album rock radio, but I largely abandoned the format because it kept playing old dinosaurs instead of new, exciting rockers. Because of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, radio has only become worse and worse since then, as so-called classic hits stations repeat the same oldies over and over but never air lost hits - many of which still seem new because they're played so rarely.
Some of the lost hits profiled here may get a little bit of play on specialty channels on satellite radio or old American Top 40 rebroadcasts, but few if any FM or AM stations today have them in rotation.
Also, I was a broadcaster, not a musician, so this blog generally does not focus on the musicianship of these songs. Instead, I talk about them as a radio DJ would. There's gonna be lots of funny stories. Imagine that!
So let the fun begin!
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