"My Heart Skips A Beat" by the Cover Girls

1989 / #38

Rate Your Music score: 2.77 out of 5!

I have a pretty decent record collection, and I try to keep used records from getting ruined even worse than they already were when I found them. And sometimes, I literally found them - as in laying around somewhere. My priority isn't strictly collecting so much as building a quality media project, for I was a broadcaster. I'm a working-class guy, and I can't afford to collect every record ever made.

A record is really just a cheap plastic disc. Yet a good record can produce great audio.

But not if some clown at the post office snaps it in half. And that's where this lost hit by the Cover Girls comes in.

The narrator of this video that appeared on YouTube famously described ordering a rare 12-inch record of this lost hit - along with a Janet Jackson disc - and how it arrived in the mail broken in two...

One record cost $42. The other was $100. That doesn't even include shipping. And the post office smashed them both.

That record is going to skip more than just a beat!

That's why we very, very, very rarely ordered records through the mail. I think we ordered an LP from a record club once, but I can't remember getting any other actual records through the mail. If I had primarily collected rare Japanese imports of Cover Girls records like the star of that video did, I might not have had a choice.

We can't go wrong - but sometimes the postal service does!

"Can't Stop" by Rick James

1985 / #50

Rate Your Music score: 2.73 out of 5!

"There's something in the air...It's telling me I should beware..."

You can already see where this is headed, right?

Rick James was the stuff of legends. When I was growing up, a TV announcer said Rick had been expelled from 6 schools in his youth. I wondered if I could beat his record. But I only made it up to 4. Oh well. Can't always win.

"Can't Stop" was Rick's last record to make the Hot 100. I always heard it while I was sitting in the den listening to the boom box in the spring of 1985. Now, about those lines, "There's something in the air...It's telling me I should beware." Ahem. Ahem ahem ahem. These lines prompted the obvious fart jokes.

This was still 1985. It wasn't wall-to-wall flatulence like 1986 was. But the way things were in 1986 were the way things were getting to be in 1985. Granted, we still had a ways to go early in the year. But we were making progress slowly but surely. I believe it was around the time of "Can't Stop" that a good fart story took place. One day, the unmistakable aroma of a silent-but-deadly filled the den. The obligatory finger-pointing ensued. Nobody could agree on who the culprit was. Nobody could even agree on what species the culprit was.

Finally, I saw that a Price Is Right board game was resting on the floor. We had found this game at a yard sale but never actually played it. I don't know why we had it out that day. I noticed the box for the game included a drawing of a woman celebrating her winnings. She was holding money and standing in front of the Lucky Seven set. (It's the 1974 version of the box that appears in several photos online.) I blamed the box lid for the wafting bunker blast. I pointed at the woman in the drawing and said, "It was her."

Then I burst out laughing!

After I fell into uncontrollable laughter after blaming a fart on a drawing on a Price Is Right board game box, the resulting angry response made me laugh even harder. It was too bad that some people had no sense of humor.

It's a shame there were no family vlogs yet in 1985. This would have had a million views within a day.

Many years later, a man who happened to be named Rick James ran for city council in a small Southern town. He posted his campaign signs on his lawn. He became irate when people kept driving up and down his street and yelling at his house, "Super freak! Super freak!"

There's more lost hits in the air, so beware!

"The Kid's American" by Matthew Wilder

1984 / #33

Rate Your Music score: 2.89 out of 5!

This is probably the first time in many, many, many years that you heard those opening notes and it didn't turn out to be "Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous" by Good Charlotte - which today is itself also a lost hit. (Incidentally, Rate Your Music reviewers just hate, hate, hate that Good Charlotte track. Maybe we'll discuss it sometime.)

I first heard of Matthew Wilder when local stations kept playing his single "Work So Hard" constantly. That record surprisingly did not reach the Hot 100. The main reason I heard it so much was that it fell into the "yacht rock" category that was so common on the MOR stations my parents subjected me to. None of that dangerous Soft Cell or Steve Miller Band for us!

Matthew's big successes came later with hits like the one we're profiling today. Thankfully, we were out of the adult contemporary malaise by then. "The Kid's American" got some radio play, but sometime not long after, we noticed something amusing about Matthew. It just so happened that he bore a strong physical resemblance to a certain local Republican politician known for erratic behavior.

You might think the song's phrase "underneath the hood" refers to that politician's supporters.

If this song had come out a couple years later, I would have noted the line, "Something's in the wind and it's comin' fast." This line fits with the flatulence theme that was so big then. One example we've covered is "Hanging On A Heart Attack" by Device, which includes the line, "You try to get up and here it comes again." This theme is also found in song titles like "No One Is To Blame" by Howard Jones and the lost hit "Rumbleseat" by John Mellencamp.

"Smokin' In The Boys Room" by Mötley Crüe

1985 / #16

Rate Your Music score: 2.22 out of 5!

Did Mr. Hooper appear in a rock video? No. He did not. At least not that I know of. Let's get that out of the way.

I didn't want to give this lost hit an entry, because it was a remake of a song whose earlier version still receives some play. Brownsville Station's recording of this song was a big hit in 1973. But when Mötley Crüe came out with their remake in 1985, I noticed something hilarious.

The video starts out funny enough, with the mean dog chewing up the kid's homework and the angry principal wielding his "board of education." But there's something really funny at 2:40. I saw it right away back in 1985.

Look at the man playing the accordion up on the stage. When I first saw that, I thought he looked just like Mr. Hooper from Sesame Street! But I knew it wasn't him, because I knew that Will Lee, the actor who played ol' Hoops, had died several years earlier. If he hadn't died, I would have thought it was him!

In fact, some people today actually think it was him.

It gets funnier, as we see the Mr. Hooper look-alike wrapped in toilet paper and sticking out his tongue.

I think the character in the video was designed to be sort of a typecast of an unhip performer that school officials might invite to play at a school event. It's like how in 1990, when I was in high school, my school had a dance where they hired a DJ who only played old MOR standards instead of exciting new rock 'n' roll. My school pals made fun of that dance for months.

Another organization I dealt with shortly thereafter was just as bad. It had a dance that was as tame as a 2020 Zoom prom, and its idea of contemporary music in 1990 was acts such as New Kids On The Block who appealed mostly to young kids. It didn't allow music that older teenagers listened to, such as rock, rap, and some other styles. In fact, one of my contemporaries tried smuggling in a Mötley Crüe tape in the front of his pants, and it was confiscated and destroyed.

"A Fine Fine Day" by Tony Carey

1984 / #22

Rate Your Music score: 3.25 out of 5!

Did Boss Hogg appear in a rock video?

In my day, I probably saw this video more than any other on MTV, with the possible exception of Paul McCartney's "No More Lonely Nights", which is now also a lost hit. Tony's song was a tale of an uncle who was in the Mafia who escaped from prison. But I don't think it was a real story. I remember some spoiled kid in school trying to glamorize his uncle who was involved in organized crime. Later I found out the real story, and it was actually almost as sinister as what you'd expect from a Mob guy, and not glamorous at all. But my schoolmate couldn't have told the story as well as Tony Carey did.

I also remember hearing this song on the car radio in a school parking lot, but MTV gave it more exposure than anyone. Every time I turned on MTV, those black-and-white photos of Uncle Sonny would inevitably appear on the screen.

But all the times I saw this video, I missed something that should have been very obvious. Fast-forward to the bridge of the song at 3:45. Pay attention to the man in the suit in the meatpacking plant lip-syncing the lyrics.

Isn't that Sorrell Booke, who played Boss Hogg on The Dukes Of Hazzard? I'm pretty sure that's him, but he wore a wig to hide his bald dome, so I never realized it was him.

I loved The Dukes Of Hazzard in its heyday and even went to see Boss Hogg when he came to the Cavalcade of Customs. That was one of the greatest days of my life! I even had the toy cars. But the show was starting to wrap things up by 1984. By the time Tony's video came out, I had practically forgotten the show ever existed. So it was only recently that I realized the man in the clip was probably Sorrell Booke.

The idea of Boss Hogg lip-syncing a rousing rock 'n' roll track is amusing enough. But there was another lost hit with a similar story. I didn't want to give it a separate entry, because it was a remake of a well-known song. But I'll give it one anyway. The smoke-filled room in the next entry has nothing to do with mobsters.

"Come As You Are" by Peter Wolf

1987 / #15

Rate Your Music score: 3.31 out of 5!

Peter Wolf is like the patron saint of lost hits. The former J. Geils Band lead singer had 3 solo top 40 hits, and all of them became lost hits right away. Peter is also known for his resemblance to Michael Richards after the defective shower head flattened his hair.

Among his lost hits is this feel-good rocker. Some have surmised that airplay for this tune was stymied somewhat because radio programmers misheard the line, "Ain't gonna be no masquerade," and thought it was something off-color. Yet I remember similarly misheard lyrics in other late '80s songs that seemed to get more radio play yet charted much lower. In fact, I remember real lyrics in that era that clearly used one of the "7 dirty words" and got gobs of pop radio airplay. Yes, Huey, we're getting to you.

The "Come As You Are" video is noteworthy for Peter jumping, hopping, and dancing throughout the song. I don't know how he did it. Peter turned 41 in 1987, and I could barely walk or stay awake more than an hour at a time by the time I was 24. It's like how Brett Favre somehow still played football when he was 41.

Sharp-eyed music and TV fans have noted that the video was filmed on the same Warner Brothers backlot used for The Dukes Of Hazzard. There are several telltale signs. This was a couple years after The Dukes Of Hazzard ended its run, and we can see the Route 36 sign that depicts that mystery state that looked like a cross between Georgia and Missouri. I'm pretty sure the gazebo at the end of the video was also in The Dukes Of Hazzard, and some have noted that it also appeared in Gilmore Girls.

What can be more entertaining than Peter Wolf jumping all over the Dukes Of Hazzard set?