"Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk" by Dr. Hook

1982 / #25

Rate Your Music score: 2.9 out of 5!

"The queen of falling diapers..."

Because this is a day ending in y, it's time for another misheard lyric!

This was the last top 40 hit for these guys from New Jersey, and it was all over the airwaves just before I turned 9. I couldn't help but get a chuckle out of one line in the song: "The queen of falling diapers."

Unfortunately, that's not the real lyrics. It might as well be, because the misheard words actually sound real. But the real line is, "The queen of all the night birds."

Oh, the video. It is hilarious. I never saw the video until YouTube came along. When I did finally see it, I burst out laughing! The clip mostly consists of members of Dr. Hook following a woman as she walks down the street and staring at her butt. Bystanders stand around chewing bubble gum (but they don't bubble).

This isn't the only jeans-related surprise ending story from that era. Around the same time as this song, there was a TV commercial for Lee jeans that was even more ridiculous...

What sort of weirdo came up with the idea for that ad? In that commersh, some little kid walks around in a hardware store and brands random people's butts with his fingers. He angers most of them, but the ad still tries to portray him as some sort of macho hero.

What an incredibly idiotic ad. People probably went around grabbing strangers' asses in public because of that commercial.

"Dream Lover" by the Rebel Pebbles

1991 / #42

Rate Your Music score: 2.38 out of 5!

Fond memories of the spring of 1991!

That was when a kid at school showed up drunk. It was also when a student who attended my school for one day goofed off all day.

And it was the spring of the "Coke can trip." I went on a trip to Pittsburgh back then in which a Coke can kept crinkling in the middle of the night. Someone kept farting really loud too. That was also when the motel was hosting a convention of dog lovers, but dogs barking wasn't nearly as loud as the flatulence or the soft drink can.

The lost hit profiled in this entry brings back memories of the "Coke can trip"!

By 1991, however, major pop stations in large cities played very little rock. So I probably didn't hear this record on a Pittsburgh station. It might have been when we had the radio on a Steubenville station.

One of the reasons I'm profiling this lost hit is to note that the Rebel Pebbles might be the highest charting act in the history of Billboard's Hot 100 to not have a Wikipedia entry. But they've had stiff competition from Colourhaus, the Johnny Average Band, Or-N-More, and St. Paul.

I wouldn't expect World Book in 1991 to have an entry on the Rebel Pebbles, because encyclopedias always excluded famous rock acts, even though they included other contemporary entertainers (such as Dan Quayle). But Wikipedia even has an entry on Domino Rally, so it should have an entry on music notables like the Rebel Pebbles.

"Something Real (Inside Me/Inside You)" by Mr. Mister

1987 / #29

Rate Your Music score: 2.95 out of 5!

Almost nobody remembers this song, but they remember the video. But mostly they only recall the first verse, where lead singer Richard Page's disembodied head floats through an alley like it's on a conveyor belt.

I think music videos were past their peak of influence by 1987, so I guess it's surprising that people remember the video at all. Videos shouldn't have been losing influence, but much of this loss was MTV's doing. The channel started to slowly but surely replace its old format of music video clips with shows that had nothing to do with videos or music. I don't even have the faintest idea what MTV airs now.

But let's talk about something that happened when I was in 7th grade - about 18 months before this record was a hit. That was when Mr. Mister was concluding a string of #1 hits.

This story is about an 8th grade girl at school. She was absolutely obsessed with Mr. Mister. She was weird. I know the preceding two sentences are redundant, but anyway, any male student was subject to ribbing by their friends about how they should take her out on a date. Apparently, Mr. Mister was coming to town for a concert. So people joked about taking her to the Mr. Mister show.

There were a few problems with that. For one, nobody in our class was old enough to drive, so how would they get to the concert? For another, how could kids who were only 12 or 13 afford Mr. Mister tickets? My allowance each week was only a dime or something like that, and I often didn't get one at all, because I had to pay for things the school falsely accused me of ruining.

Back then, you had more responsibilities at a younger age, but you also had more privileges. However, they didn't give driver's licenses to 12-year-olds.

I admit that I did destroy something once in high school and had to pay for it. There was some counselor or social worker type at my school who kept deliberately goading me to get angry. I kept my cool as long as I could. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore, so I picked up some toy that had some name like Binary Beads and just snapped it right in two. There was one other time when they kept goading another student all day, and finally, he lost his shit. He did something really horrible like knock a book onto the floor. They wrestled him to the ground, and I never saw him again.

I shouldn't have had to pay for the Binary Beads, because everyone has their breaking point if they're being egged on. Angrily damaging books and toys was sort of like John McEnroe smashing tennis rackets. Breaking inanimate objects wasn't nearly as bad as if we had actually injured people.

But by then, it was the '90s, so most of the time, we were being talked down to like a baby.

"Sign Your Name" by Terence Trent D'Arby

1988 / #4

Rate Your Music score: 3.49 out of 5!

You knew this one was coming, didn't you?

You'd think a record that went all the way to #4 wouldn't be lost, but I can't even remember the last time I heard this song on regular radio, except maybe in an American Top 40 rebroadcast. Also, don't be confused by the YouTube link: Terence legally changed his name to Sananda Maitreya in 2001.

I'm profiling this lost hit because of the treatment it got from my high school sophomore class. We had an assignment in English class that was supposed to involve pop music somehow. Someone used the bridge of this song - specifically, the "shoo-bee-doo" background vocals - for their assignment. I can't remember any details of how the song was supposed to be used for this project. But for months after, people kept singing that bridge in a hilariously exaggerated manner.

It was like how everyone kept replacing words in songs with "baste." I remember "Armageddon It" by Def Leppard becoming "Armabastin' It." "Blame It On The Rain" by Milli Vanilli became "Blame It On The Baste."

That assignment was in the same class where a student kept loudly passing gas and another student told the teacher, "He's back here fartin' up a storm!" And it was the same class where I had a textbook that had been defaced because a guy in a photo looked like Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet.

"Ready For The 80's" by the Village People

1979 / #52

Rate Your Music score: 2.67 out of 5!

Who ever thought the Village People were the right group to sing a song called "Ready For The 80's"? That's like when Air Supply sang, "I can make all the stadiums rock!"

I remember the Village People performing this song on TV on New Year's Eve to ring in 1980. Much as the '70s were the decade of the Bee Gees, the '80s were going to be the decade of the Village People! The nation's youth were probably buying up construction worker and cowboy outfits after seeing that performance.

Actually, not quite. "Ready For The 80's" was the group's last chart appearance. They weren't ready for the '80s! This single actually charted months after Disco Demolition Night. By the time it charted, the Hot 100 was starting to look more like an '80s chart, so they were lucky the record even reached #52.

Although the Village People never charted again, you'd still occasionally see them mentioned. When I was in high school, a teacher gave us an old Village People word search to work on after we finished our busywork. By then, it was the '90s, which the Village People weren't ready for either.

Years later, the cop from the Village People got in trouble for a series of run-ins with the law. He gave police a fake name during one of the incidents, but the police recognized him as the Village People cop.

I don't know of anyone making a song about being ready for the 2020s. If they did, it's already aged poorly.

"C-I-T-Y" by John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band

1985 / #18

Rate Your Music score: 2.55 out of 5!

Remember the city craze of 1985?

With songs like "You Belong To The City" and "We Built This City", cities loomed large. That may have also been the same year I borrowed a book from the public library about the design of buildings in several of America's major cities. Cities were the home of pioneers, since that was before gentrification ruined our cities.

It was also the year of towns. We had "Small Town" and "Life In A Northern Town." Bruce Springsteen gave us "My Hometown." When that song came on the radio in 7th grade home ec, it prompted a response from a particularly troubled student. He declared, "My hometown is Pennsylvania, Kentucky!" Also, he used to fight by biting his adversaries.

And John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band graced us with "C-I-T-Y." This memorable song is now a lost hit.

While John is a real person, it appears as if we can't say the same for ol' Beav. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, the band got the name Beaver Brown from a color of paint. I'm not sure how much we can still trust Wikipedia though, since the CIA makes so many edits that are full of disinformation. If anyone would make up something about John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band, it's the CIA.

The band's musical spelling lesson was all the rage in the fall of 1985. I remember one time we were in the car on Interstate 71, and I noticed the people in the car next to us were spelling out "C-I-T-Y" with their hands - just like in the video. So I knew what song was on their car radio.

Apparently, this band is still around, and has been in existence since 1972.

"Fool's Game" by Michael Bolton

1983 / #82

Rate Your Music score: 3.04 out of 5!

Michael Bolton a hard rocker?

I repeat: Michael Bolton a hard rocker?????

This lost hit appeared in 1983, when I really didn't appreciate all the interesting music that was out there. I had a few rough times with some things in life during the preceding time frame. Fourth grade was a disaster (but still somehow less of a disaster than high school). Even outside of school, there were a couple of incidents that still stuck in my craw.

So I hated to lose, and almost anyone who challenged Men At Work's dominance met my wrath. Take the Eurythmics and the Police, for instance. These were generally decent bands. But they incurred the displeasure of the Great Royal Tim when their hit singles prevented Men At Work from charting higher.

I think I liked "Jeopardy" by the Greg Kihn Band. But even Greg wasn't safe from my disappointment, because he was one of many music stars of the era who appeared in annoying radio or TV commercials for soft drinks. I think it was the same for Laura Branigan.

Anyway, back to Michael Bolton. "Fool's Game" only peaked at #82, so it wasn't much of a threat to Men At Work's chart prominence. But Michael elicited my chagrin because stations kept playing this track when they could have been playing Men At Work instead.

It's actually surprising that this lost hit only got to #82. I know competition was fierce in 1983, but maybe the sound was just too familiar. I think "Fool's Game" sounded a little bit like the previously popular "Shadows Of The Night" by Pat Benatar, so maybe that sound wasn't considered new anymore. But, a couple years later, "Crazy In The Night (Barking At Airplanes)" by Kim Carnes - which is now a lost hit - actually did pretty well on the chart, and it had that same sound.

A few years after "Fool's Game", Michael reemerged as an MOR crooner. I kept reminding folks that he had that action-packed rocker "Fool's Game" a few years earlier, but somehow that song had been consigned to the memory hole. Everyone thought I was making it up.

Michael Bolton. The man, the myth, the legend!

"High Time" by Styx

1983 / #48

Rate Your Music score: 2.64 out of 5!

Cashbox called this lost hit a "strong defense of freedom of expression." What a novel idea!

These days, there are entire agencies to find things to get offended about. Things weren't as bad in the 1980s, but they weren't perfectly hunky-dory either. Our cable system took forever to get MTV, and Q-102 reportedly refused to play certain songs because "morality" groups threatened to picket the station's advertisers. According to an online post, the records in question included "Relax" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and "I Want Your Sex" by George Michael. The picketers were probably just bluffing, as I don't remember anyone picketing Campbell County Chevrolet because WCLU played "Relax." (This station went under just weeks before George's hit was released.)

As for "High Time", I didn't hear it much when it was a current hit, but I know I did hear it some. That's sufficient for it to be profiled here as a lost hit. It's like the kid in school who you didn't see much but you remember because they understood free expression better than school officials did.

What makes this track especially amusing is that ARSA has a WCLU survey sheet that mistakenly (?) calls it "High Times" - as in High Times magazine. There was one time in high school when an anti-drug speaker came, and he held up a copy of High Times. He called it a "druggie magazine." At another one of his presentations, we were all supposed to keep stomping our feet and flailing our arms in unison.

In the lost hit profiled in this entry, singer Dennis DeYoung declared, "I see the kids of a new generation...And they won't stand for this mind control." I guess he never saw my high school. Outside of my school, however, the 1980s were better than today. These days, everyone - even at other schools - just snaps into line.

"Alibis" by Sérgio Mendes

1984 / #29

Rate Your Music score: 3.13 out of 5!

Although this lost hit was credited to Sérgio Mendes, the lead vocal was by Joe Pizzulo. Joe was the guy who attempted the Lyle Alzado look in the above video. This single was at the tail end of the era in which everyone tried to sound like Michael McDonald.

And the beat of this song still comes in handy after 41 years. Every time someone accuses me of something I didn't do, and I have an alibi that proves I didn't do it, I start humming this beat. That usually shuts them up right quick, but some people are allergic to facts, so they continue to keep up with their bullshit.

Probably the most noteworthy example of this was in 1997 when one of the usual suspects on the Internet accused me of hacking his ISP and knocking it offline. The problem with this was that it went offline while I was on a little road trip - specifically, the one that included Mount Mitchell - and this was before wi-fi access was as ubiquitous as it is today. Unless you seriously think I lugged my Power Mac and dialup modem into a motel room, I think we can establish my innocence. I couldn't broadcast myself humming "Alibis" across the Internet back then, but I'm sure I hummed it to myself when the accusation arose.

For years and years, there has also been a strange tendency by some to charge that anyone who agrees with me on any online forum is actually me using a sockpuppet account. That has been debunked so many times it'll make your face spin. Some people just can't accept that their opinions are in the minority. I've often had an alibi on these occasions too, but sometimes the person who I allegedly impersonated appears in plain sight in a video. This proves they're real people, but for some, even that isn't proof enough.

The only times I did use a phony account were the times I wasn't actually accused. I once made an account on a dialup bulletin board with the name of a porn publisher (not one of the big 3), and it was met with just a shrug. Later, I made an Internet account with an obviously fake name. I didn't even try to hide that it was me. Only one person ever made an issue of it, and he was the same guy who accused me of hacking his ISP.

Dum-da-dum-dum-dummm-dum, dum-da-dum-dum-dummm-dum...