"Stay The Night" by Benjamin Orr

1986 / #24

Rate Your Music score: 3.48 out of 5!

Remember this "dirty" song by the Cars bassist?

Seriously, our local intelligentsia - or rather, stupidsia - thought this song was the filthiest thing ever recorded. You'd think we would have had a lot of laughs at their expense over that, but they had lots of power, and it wasn't so funny.

I had a teacher in 8th grade who actually went on a big crusade against this song. One day, she was haranguing the class about something, when she mentioned that she had heard this record on the radio. She was shocked that any station would broadcast such porn.

This was a school that wouldn't even maintain order in class or in the hallways. I was even hit in the head with a rock someone threw at recess, and I was once hit in the head with a Liquid Paper bottle someone threw in another class. A student also once threatened me with a razor in class. Yet the school thought it could ban a song by the Cars bassist from local airwaves!

Don't laugh. Our major radio and TV stations were so conservative that they would agree to yank a song if pushed hard enough. This is the market where our ABC affiliate refused to air New Year's Rockin' Eve for several years.

Our school also crusaded against a video store that rented out (gasp!) R-rated movies.

All of this is like in the 1990s when some busybodies purchased the rights to some songs they thought were too suggestive - even though they were actually pretty tame - and relicensed them under SESAC so radio stations couldn't play them. Most stations paid only ASCAP and BMI fees, not SESAC. A radio station in Pittsburgh got in trouble for playing some of this music without realizing it was under SESAC.

What my school did was Taliban-level stuff. But now - in the 2020s - censorship like this is essentially the norm.

"I Did It" by the Dave Matthews Band

2001 / #71

Rate Your Music score: 2.32 out of 5!

As late as 2001, we were still rockin' and rollin' by adding new lost hits!

This is yet another song that sounds like it has something to do with flatulence: "I did it...Guilty as charged."

I can't believe this song doesn't have a better Rate Your Music score. It's not surprising though that it only peaked at #71 on the Hot 100, because the chart's methodology by then was generally unfavorable to acts like the Dave Matthews Band that had a solid reputation. By 2001, the music biz rewarded fleeting trends, not reputations.

Hilariously, when "I Did It" reached its chart peak, the song at #1 was another title that seemed evocative of trouser sneezes: "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy featuring RikRok. "It Wasn't Me" was actually one of few big hits of the era that has lasted, as people still sing the title when denying something they're accused of.

The Dave Matthews Band did a lot to cement their good reputation. Central to this was drummer Carter Beauford frequently chewing bubble gum and blowing bubbles while performing. Someone who went to a Dave Matthews Band concert in Kansas City said Carter blew a huge bubble that burst all over his face during the show.

But the band's reputation took a hit in 2004 when their tour bus was traveling through Chicago and accidentally dumped an estimated 800 pounds of feces and urine onto a sightseeing boat in the Chicago River. This incident drew the attention of even the mayor, and the band had to pay a $200,000 legal settlement. The band also agreed to keep a log of when their buses emptied their septic systems. The driver of the bus pleaded guilty to reckless conduct.

He did it! Guilty as charged!

"Alive Again" by Chicago

1978 / #14

Rate Your Music score: 3.08 out of 5!

"I am a lima bean..."

Someone suggested that this blog feature Chicago's "25 Or 6 To 4", but I wouldn't quite call that song lost - unless you're talking about the band's 1986 rerecording. In fact, somebody recently pointed out that "25 Or 6 To 4" was the most played song of all of June on Sirius XM's Classic Vinyl channel. Chicago has a big catalog though, and some of it is unintentionally hilarious.

One of the first misheard lyrics I ever remember was when I was 5 years old. Most of my exposure to pop music was from the AM radio in my parents' car. The radio had 5 presets, which were set by pulling the buttons outward. This was also around the time I first saw a music chart. Someone showed me a newspaper that listed the week's top 10 singles and said those were the songs that were big on the radio at the time. After I heard a song on the radio about a lima bean while we were on a family trip to Wapakoneta, I kept saying that I hoped the lima bean song would come on the radio again.

Nobody knew what I was talking about. When the song came on again, I noted the chorus that went, "I am a lima bean."

And the rest as they say is history.

It turns out I actually mentioned this a couple times over the past few years on a website that has absolutely nothing to do with this topic.

I remember a couple other misheard lyrics that I used to hear on the radio back then. One was the Four Seasons singing, "Oh one eye." Another was the Patti Smith Group's "Eight Is Enough belongs to us."

I probably haven't heard "Alive Again" on regular radio more than once in the past 45 years. This might not be the last we hear of Chicago on this blog, since they seem to enjoy having #14 hits that become lost.

"I Want You" by Shana

1989 / #40

Rate Your Music score: 2.86 out of 5!

This record spent one week in the top 40 - at #40.

That's happened many times. But this time was different.

That's because this song was never heard on American Top 40 in Cincinnati despite reaching the top 40. AT40 was broadcast around the world, but Q-102 was Cincinnati's AT40 affiliate for years. Q-102 skipped over the show for the week ending January 13, 1990, choosing instead to broadcast the prior week's show.

You might think a competitor should have picked up AT40 so the program could be shown more respect, but by 1990, Q-102 didn't have a competitor - at least not in the same format. So the butchering of AT40 that had gone on for years continued. That started in 1987 when Q-102 kept deleting "I Want Your Sex" by George Michael from the show. It continued when the station inexplicably started the show late once and cut out portions of it so it would end on time.

This - shockingly - isn't as bad as what was starting to happen in some other cities. In a few cities, the AT40 affiliate would drop the show without even telling the AT40 people. So AT40 couldn't find another station for their great program.

It was also in 1990 that American Top 40 celebrated its 20th anniversary. There was a display about it at Forest Fair Mall. It wasn't much though. They just put up a few posters listing the top 100 records of each year. It was off in a part of the mall that people didn't use. Wait, that was the whole mall.

We don't stop 'til we reach the top!

"Chariots Of Fire" by Vangelis

1981 / #1

Rate Your Music score: 3.43 out of 5!

A chart-topping smash might not seem lost. But the instrumental theme to the movie Chariots Of Fire by Greek composer Evangelos Papathanassiou is said to have now vanished from radio - despite the heavy airplay it got during its 1981-82 chart run.

I remember hearing it on a family vacation to Myrtle Beach, as it accompanied a channel on the motel cable TV system that showed all-text computerized ads. I don't know why we sat around and watched an ad channel, but it must have been raining. This is also the record that ended Joan Jett's 7-week reign at #1.

I've never seen the movie though. It won 4 Oscars - counting one for Vangelis's theme music. Everyone says their school took them to see this film, yet the students weren't that interested in it. According to the description, the movie was about an Olympic runner overcoming prejudice. Many of my schoolmates liked to create prejudice instead of fighting against it.

I've heard of lots of feature films that schools had everyone see, yet students weren't interested in. Apparently, there was one that had absolutely no dialogue whatsoever. I vaguely remember seeing something like that. I remember a high school teacher showing us some theatrical release and fast-forwarding through most of it. I think it was something that was only PG-rated, so it's not like there was anything offensive that we needed to skip over. She didn't say anything as she was fast-forwarding.

This also reminds me of the time in 8th grade when our school took us to see a play and someone kept chewing bubble gum and making Darth Vader noises.