"Help Is On Its Way" by Little River Band

1977 / #14

Rate Your Music score: 3.31 out of 5!

That late 1970s strum is the sound of excitement!

This record - like "Lowdown" by Boz Scaggs - has what sounds like a strum of a bass every few seconds. I've always thought that this characteristic late '70s strum was evocative of the progress associated with a road construction zone and how we'd soon get to enjoy a faster, smoother, more efficient ride.

Imagine riding down a city street with "Help Is On Its Way" or "Lowdown" blaring on the AM radio and seeing construction crews working in the breeze! The smell of summer fills the air, and bulldozers loom on a grassy lot between some fine old apartment buildings. You're informed that there's a new road being built, and you just can't wait to see it!

Those were highlights of my young life!

At a very young age, I developed a keen interest in road transport. Much of this was because of the boom in local road projects in the '70s. I even had a favorite road: Lourdes Lane in Newport. When I was about 4, I actually drew a map of the surrounding area on a paper grocery bag.

But it all came crashing down not long after. The word progress sometimes defies its own meaning. We were in the car heading to Rink's when we noticed Lourdes Lane had been completely torn down. The construction vehicles that we had been seeing there for months weren't to improve my favorite road, but to demolish it. My favorite road was gone, never to return!

Little River Band formed in Melbourne, Australia, but American Top 40 once reported that they were the group whose members hailed from the most different countries. Wikipedia says they've had members born in Australia, the Netherlands, England, Italy, New Zealand, the United States, and perhaps elsewhere. The band has also had numerous lineup changes over its half-century in existence. The group has included a caption with some of its videos on YouTube that warns...

"Unfortunately, the Little River Band that tours the United States today contains NO ORIGINAL MEMBERS. Be aware that they often use our videos, images and audio to mislead the public into believing original members will be appearing. This American band owns the trademark 'Little River Band' and this prevents the original band from performing or touring."

Time for a cool change!

"Goodnight Saigon" by Billy Joel

1983 / #56

Rate Your Music score: 3.52 out of 5!

"We had no Softsoap..."

"Goodnight Saigon" is a song about the Vietnam War - more specifically about Marines who fought in that conflict.

Many critics and musicians liked the song. Garth Brooks said it was his favorite Billy Joel song. But others disagreed. Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh said it was "obscenity" that the song "refuses to take sides" on the war.

Other critics couldn't look past one particular line in the song: "We had no Softsoap."

You heard that right. "We had no Softsoap."

I've always been as flabbergasted at that line as you are. That's not a misheard line. That's the real lyrics.

I used to hear this song when I was about 10, and I was always afraid I'd have to fight in a war, because there would be no Softsoap. Some said that line completely undercut the rest of the song and its assessment of the war.

The "Goodnight Saigon" clip posted above is the album version that people are more familiar with. The song also had a popular video, which appears to have instead been recorded at one of Billy's concerts...

That was back when Billy always wore a bandage on his left thumb. Several articles suggest this was because a recent motorcycle crash had left him with no bone in the tip of his finger.

I also once read that Billy would shred newspapers on stage if a critic at the paper gave him a bad review.

Billy Joel. The man, the myth, the legend!

"Fallen Angel" by Poison

1988 / #12

Rate Your Music score: 3.28 out of 5!

"Algebra books out into the city streets..."

Ready for another misheard lyric?

When you attend a terrible high school, it's sure to inspire misheard words to songs. It even influences how correct lyrics are perceived, as the situation at school can be so unhealthy that your mind wanders just seeing and hearing everyday things. I can't even begin to tell you how incompetent some of our school officials were. To be fair, I wouldn't say it was like having the 2020s in the 1980s. Nothing was that bad until the 2020s. But my high school modeled the fascism that others later built upon.

This school taught me that there's algebra books out in the city streets. I mean that literally. I had repeated altercations with one student in particular who kept destroying my textbooks. I think he even threw my algebra book out into a city street. I know he stuck bubble gum in my science book, and he threw one of my books in a mud puddle. One time I got in a fight with him, and he tried making me pay for his broken glasses. The problem with this was that he never wore glasses.

When I first heard "Fallen Angel" blasting over the boom box in my den, the very first line caught my ear. Why, it was about "algebra books out into the city streets"! I felt I could relate to the song because it was about school textbooks getting ruined. But this line was misheard. The song actually says, "She stepped off the bus out into the city streets."

I'm not exactly sure what context I first heard the song in. I was thinking it was when Power 94½ began playing it, but it might have been the radio show Joel Denver's Future Hits, which aired in many cities. I'm not even sure what station we heard Joel on, but it might have been Power 94½. Around the same time, there was also a live call-in show that aired on Sunday nights. This show interviewed big music stars of the era. I know there was a show that had a host named Shadow P. Stevens - not to be confused with Shadoe Stevens of American Top 40.

Those shows aired pretty late at night, so I must have only heard them in the summer, when I wasn't forced to wake up at 6 AM to attend a shitty school.

"Hypnotize Me" by Wang Chung

1987 / #36

Rate Your Music score: 3.41 out of 5!

"Turn on your Lite-Brite..."

Turn on your Lite-Brite! Go ahead! Turn it on!

I considered Wang Chung to be central to the musical and societal happenings of the mid-1980s. Their presence on our TV screens just screamed mid-'80s. But they haven't reached the top 40 since 1987, when they gave us this memorable lost hit.

And remember it we shall.

When I was 14, we went on a great family vacation to Iowa. As we were scooting across the Illinois prairie on Interstate 74, I heard "Hypnotize Me" on the car radio. The chorus commanded, "Turn on your white light." Being the musical genius that I am, I immediately came up with new lyrics: "Turn on your Lite-Brite."

This was reminiscent of an early 1980s commercial for Del Monte canned peaches, to which I intoned, "Come on over to the Lite-Brite"...

Del Monte went on to sell a grand total of about 3 cans of its "lite" variant. It had to be a tax write-off.

In 2007, a marketing campaign in Boston used electric signs similar to Lite-Brites. Local authorities were afraid of Lite-Brites and cracked down hard, saying the signs were actually bombs. The incident is still known as the Boston Mooninite panic.

Eek! Lite-Brites!

"This Is Not America" by David Bowie/Pat Metheny Group

1985 / #32

Rate Your Music score: 3.65 out of 5!

For a song that's almost never been played in 40 years, everything about this lost hit is memorable. It has sort of a dark tone and a dark title. The video consists of clips from the movie The Falcon And The Snowman, and I'll always associate the song with the scene of a character from the film screaming at 3:12. Even hearing this song on the radio was memorable. I recall pondering it as it was on the car radio as we pulled into the driveway on the way home from the grocery store.

I continued to be influenced by the very title. When I was in my late teens in the early 1990s, I planned to write a book titled This Is Not America exposing how local school officials and politicians were running an organized crime racket, and how they were retaliating against young people who fought back. They continue to do it. This Is Not America was a good title, because they kept violating liberties guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. Someone dismissed my proposed book as "a left-wing complaint", but didn't actually deny any of it was true. Everyone knew it was true, but I was supposed to be quiet. It was the same wimpy, dismissive attitude now being displayed regarding the lockdown atrocities of the past few years.

Parts of this concept exist in bits and pieces in my later projects. I wish I could gather together all of that project, but it's on a disk for an Atari 800. I find it interesting that the home computing industry kept introducing new computers and standards that were incompatible with older machines, which relegated past events to the memory hole.

I've had to work harder at my projects since then, because more and more things have happened that are obviously idiotic. Things have gotten more ridiculous and stupid all the time.

My proposed book opened, "America is fast becoming a police state." A few people back then scoffed at this warning, but how did that turn out?

This is not America! I don't know what it is, but it sure as shit ain't America.

"I.G.Y. (What A Beautiful World)" by Donald Fagen

1982 / #26

Rate Your Music score: 3.9 out of 5!

"What a beautiful world this will be...What a glorious time to be free..."

Don't confuse "I.G.Y." with IGA or an IGO or a UGO.

This snappy lost hit by Steely Dan's Donald Fagen is one of a handful of songs I remember being popular around the time I wasted my brother's pink construction paper by drawing a stupid picture of a guy blowing a bubble. But that's not why it gets an entry here.

When I was 9, people developed a habit of wiping boogers on the wall and furniture at home. When a blob of mucus was found on a wall, it might be called an IGO - identified gross object. I also recall a UGO - unidentified gross object - stuck on a particular spot on the bedroom wall. It was right where you entered the room, below a styrofoam mock-up of one of those traffic signs that said "BUMP." Nobody knew what the hell it was. Sometimes those were produced when you got a piece of food stuck between your teeth and you spit it out in a projectile fashion.

After IGO's began filling our walls, "I.G.Y." began filling our airwaves. What does the title of the song stand for? It stands for International Geophysical Year - a period that ran from July 1957 through December 1958.

What was the song actually about? Although it was a hit in 1982, the topic seems tailor-made for the 2020s. I read an article a few years ago that said the song was about scientific arrogance. It was about scientists having unrealistic ideas and trying to impose them on everyone despite being at odds with objective facts. This inspired lines like, "90 minutes from New York to Paris." It was like "I am the science."

The International Geophysical Year itself seemed to defy objective facts. The event defined a "year" as being 18 months, like we're on Mars or something. It's like how the CIA just invents new oceans or how The View insisted the square root of 2 is a rational number.

What a glorious time to be - oh, wait.

"Someone Could Lose A Heart Tonight" by Eddie Rabbitt

1981 / #15

Rate Your Music score: 3.22 out of 5!

Back in 1981-82, this lost hit brang amusement to 3rd graders far and wide.

Each day, kids at school would sit there in class and sing this song with new lyrics. They called it "Someone Could Throw A Dart Tonight."

Wait, no, that wasn't it. I think it was "Someone Could Wreck A Cart Tonight." Or maybe it was "Someone Could Eat A Tart Tonight." Yeah, that was it!

For reference, this record was a hit right at the same time as "Harden My Heart" by Quarterflash. There was a kid in one of my classes who was about 5 years older than everyone else who sat there in class singing new lyrics for that song: "I'm gonna farten my fart...I'm gonna swallow my beer." He also came up with new lyrics for the Christmas song "Silver Bells": "Silver bells...Your momma smells."

Years after his heyday, Eddie Rabbitt went on a crusade against rap lyrics. In 1992, he wrote a letter to Billboard in which he groaned, "Are we becoming a nation that is just too cool to care?" On a 1991 album, Eddie included a song called "C-Rap (Country Rap)", which protested against "dirty talking on the radio"...

Silly Rabbitt!

"Into You" by Giant Steps

1989 / #58

Rate Your Music score: 2.92 out of 5!

This is the third and final entry of the Salmonella Three - 3 lost hits that ruled the radio during my bout with salmonella.

I always confused Giant Steps with Times Two, even though Giant Steps' vocals sounded more like Scritti Politti. And, unlike Times Two, Giant Steps appeared on A&M Records. And trust me, anyone who has ever come across their 45's knows this.

A&M did not always use the sturdiest material to press its records. By the late 1980s, its singles were on such cheap styrene that they're practically transparent if examined in a certain light. It's like the clandestine Soviet records that were pressed on x-ray sheets. And they last about as many plays before they start to sound fuzzy.

A&M's Herb Alpert blamed radio stations for wearing out promotional copies of records, yet much of that was because A&M used such flimsy material. But when you're talking about the singles sold in record stores, perhaps more blame rests with companies like Panasonic that sold turntables that had a stylus that seemed specifically designed to wear down styrene 45's. Record collecting websites have tried letting the world know about Panasonic's swindle.

A website comment says styrene records were "'cue-it-once' items" at radio stations. This meant you should only cue it up once before copying it to cartridge. The second try would leave a scratching sound at the beginning of the brand new record.

Years after Giant Steps mania - and before record collecting became gentrified - folks on the public Internet searched in earnest for the duo's old singles. They expressed extreme constipation that every copy they found sounded scratchy.

But even today, old lost hits still sometimes spin away on turntables in home offices far and wide.