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.
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