"Street Of Dreams" by Nia Peeples

1991 / #12

Rate Your Music score: 3.05 out of 5!

Is a hit record truly lost if you don't even remember that it existed?

There was a period of over 8 years when I listened to American Top 40 so religiously that there were very, very few top 40 hits that I simply couldn't remember even when I heard them on AT40 rebroadcasts years later. These included the now-lost hit "Jam Tonight" by Freddie Jackson and New Edition's remake of "Earth Angel." Nothing against these tunes, but for some reason, I simply could not recall them - even though each of them was in the top 40 for weeks. I had no recollection of them whatsoever. I couldn't remember them even existing.

There's also maybe 3 or 4 sleepy ballads that just barely scraped into the top 40 back then that I can't place how they sounded, but I remember them existing.

Now I've found an action-packed dance-pop number that made it all the way up to #12 during that 8-year timeframe that I simply don't remember at all - even though it charted much higher than the aforementioned tunes. I was looking at a chart for the last week before Billboard switched to its new Hot 100 formula in 1991. I got to #12 and I said to myself, "What?????"

I'm talking about "Street Of Dreams" by Nia Peeples. Again, I have nothing against this record. I simply don't even remember that it existed. I'm drawing a complete blank.

There was nothing in my personal life at the time that was any worse than what was usually going on. In fact, things were actually much better than they were a couple years before. So it's not like there's a big chunk of my memory that was wiped out by a crisis. And I know I heard Nia's tune, because it would have appeared on AT40 for weeks during the Shadoe Stevens era before the chart switchover.

When I saw Nia Peeples on the chart, I thought that might be the song that began, "I know you can control it, baby, know you can control it, baby, know you can control it, baby." I'm drawing a blank as to what that was, but I remember hearing it during a little Saturday drive in which I was angry about something.

Some folks say the change to the Hot 100 methodology made the chart more accurate. They may have had a case, except perhaps in one aspect: The new formula disproportionately reduced the influence of smaller cities. After that, the chart included less heartland rock, which was more popular among small-town venues. Heartland rockers were among our bread and butter at the time. Most of my pals lived in urban areas but enjoyed rural activities. In a recent interview, John Mellencamp backed up the claim that the new formula was weighted toward very large cities more than it should have been.

That change also the marks the start of what I call the second generation of lost hits, which accounts for some entries on this blog that cover music at least into the 2000s.