"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.