"Mutual Surrender (What A Wonderful World)" by Bourgeois Tagg

1986 / #62

Rate Your Music score: 3.18 out of 5!

"I throw up my hands for you..."

This lost hit by this Sacramento band ranks up there with Crystal Gayle's line about "overflowing."

With lyrics like "I throw up my hands for you", the song doesn't need much elaboration. What makes it even funnier is that this act - though not a huge chart presence - had such a squeaky clean image like Judson Spence. They made Glass Tiger and Mr. Mister look like Marilyn Manson in comparison.

Lead singer Brent Bourgeois looked sort of like Chris de Burgh trying to emulate the Javier Milei look. Brent went on to have a solo hit that edged into the top 40 a few years later. Maybe we'll get to it someday. A friend of this blog once said that acts like Mr. Mister and Genesis circa their Invisible Touch set were like a "yacht rock" revival, but I think Brent's solo career might have a stronger claim on that.

Whatever the weather, the lost hit we're profiling today seems to represent a time when musical tastes and aesthetics shifted. It was roughly the era when MTV ditched its set that looked like the back room of a friendly record shop and replaced it with a background of forgettable sped-up film clips. I always think of the commercial for chocolate mint Bubblicious as an embodiment of this shift. It was also the same time everyone was supposed to start wearing flowered surfer shorts all the time. Or if that violated our school's dress code (as most things did), we were supposed to wear booger green pants that said "OFF DUTY" all over them.

"It's Money That Matters" by Randy Newman

1988 / #60

Rate Your Music score: 3.31 out of 5!

Unless you had the attention span of a grape, it was hard being a music fan in 1988. In fact, it was hard doing anything in 1988.

I was alive then, and a lot of things people did and said then were idiotic beyond belief. Remember, this was before social media, so we had to deal with most of it in person. Of all of the people I used to know, most never adjusted to the great big world.

The year only had a few music highlights. One of them was Randy Newman's single we're profiling today - though it sadly fell short of the top 40. In fact, his only top 40 hit was "Short People." I remember hearing "Short People" on the car radio when I was growing up and thinking it was hilarious. Randy also reminded me of my eye doctor who I used to visit in my day, as he had the same curly hair and glasses.

Life was a shambles by 1988 when "It's Money That Matters" rolled along. America was living up to the song's title. The excesses and vagaries of capitalism and militarism - though shunned by most people you met in normal venues - were honored by the media, my high school classmates, and computer bulletin board trolls. And we heard endless talk about the "drought" too, just for good measure - even though the Home Run Derby was supposed to be in Cincinnati that year, and rain forced it to be canceled for the only time in its history.

Also, I have a record of "It's Money That Matters." I remember listening to it one day and it skipped because the neighbors kept banging things around and I jumped to try to get them to stop.

Many years after the song charted, Will Sasso gave us some uproarious segments on Mad TV in which he played Randy Newman composing songs for the latest Star Wars and Toy Story films...

"Headed For A Heartbreak" by Winger

1989 / #19

Rate Your Music score: 2.96 out of 5!

When was the last time you even thought about this song?

I know where I was when I first heard this cut. It was in St. Louis during my trip where I wrote "Placed by the Gideons" on a record from a Froot Loops box and put it inside the Bible in a motel room. That followed a year that was completely shot to hell by my shitty high school.

Naturally, the school made me repeat the year. I spent the last 6 months of my first attempt at sophomore year goofing off after the principal told me I was going to fail anyway. For the life of me, I don't know why I came back to the same school, but it wasn't my choice.

This story is like a continuation of my entry on "Look Out Any Window" by Bruce Hornsby & the Range. During my first sophomore year, I took art, and the teacher often let us listen to the radio. When Bruce's now-lost hit was on, we lip-synced to it in a comically exaggerated fashion. Art class only had 5 students, and I think I failed the class by one point.

During my second sophomore year, this class was down to 3 students, and we were all among the 5 from the previous year. The other 2 had transferred out of the school completely, because it was such a bad school. At the start of the school year, Winger's now-lost hit was at its peak, and it too got the Bruce Hornsby treatment.

When the bridge of Winger's record came on, a student began lip-syncing it with a hilariously crazed look in his eye. He creepily glared as he mouthed the lyrics. It was as funny as you might imagine.

Whenever something like this happened and people started laughing, the teacher would always get an irritated look on his face and ask, "What's funny?"

Also, between sophomore years was when I had my first Fourth of July bonfire. I conducted this bonfire in my back yard, and I mostly burned textbooks that I was saddled with - which were already ripped to shreds because the school used books that were at least 15 years old. In later years, the bonfires mostly sipped away household trash like light bulbs and broken appliances, but this proud tradition withered and died after we could no longer find a place to do it.

"How You Gonna See Me Now" by Alice Cooper

1978 / #12

Rate Your Music score: 3.14 out of 5!

Alice Cooper, as you may know, was a pioneer of shock rock. In fact, he was so shocking that one of his biggest hits was the ballad we're profiling here today. Alice had become so soft by 1978 that this record even appeared on Billboard's middle-of-the-road chart alongside the Carpenters and Engelbert Humperdinck.

Yet - as is often the case with songs profiled here - I never saw the video for this now-lost hit until I stumbled upon it on YouTube. Believe it or not, YouTube used to have stuff other than police bodycam videos and AI-generated editorials attacking parents who speak at school board meetings. I found Alice's video back when the big YouTube fads were family vlogs and cosmetic dentistry ads. Those were the days, huh? The "How You Gonna See Me Now" clip actually is a conceptual video instead of just a stage performance, as Alice is wheeled into a psychiatric ward where he chews bubble gum.

One particular Alice Cooper-related incident highlights just how stodgy our local TV stations are. In 1972, ABC debuted a late-night series called In Concert, which featured taped performances of music acts of the era. The show's premiere included Alice Cooper. But our local ABC affiliate broke away from that episode, as they considered Alice too shocking for Cincinnati airwaves - even late at night. The show was replaced with a Rawhide rerun. It was believed that this was the only ABC affiliate in the whole country that didn't show this In Concert episode.

This censorship caused teenage fans of the singer to picket the station. Following these protests, the station decided to broadcast the episode later - but with Alice's appearance removed. The station's manager then said he wasn't opposed to all rock concerts, because "we think they're going to be a smashing success."

"Going to be"? It was already 1972. Rock concerts had been "a smashing success" for 20 years. That's like if somebody today said, "We think the Internet is going to be a smashing success."

That wasn't even the only incident like that on our local network affiliates in that era. A few years later, Cher got a new show, and our CBS affiliate reportedly refused to show it, as they considered Cher's outfits too revealing.

Alice Cooper was one of these acts who went on to make a stunning comeback in 1989 along with many other 1970s performers. A year or so after that, I was at my desk at school and was flipping through an atlas they had. That was one of approximately 3 books in the whole school, so that was the only activity we had. When I paged past the map of Michigan, one of my classmates saw it and noted that the Wolverine State is "Alice Cooper's hometown."

Not long after, this student came to school drunk. For him, school was out forever.

"Hearts In Trouble" by Chicago

1990 / #75

Rate Your Music score: 1.83 out of 5!

This blog is not a place for catatonic worship of musical artists, no matter how many positive contributions they've made.

In my day, I adored Chicago's now-lost hit "Alive Again." By the mid-1980s, we poked fun at the band a lot because they had softened up so much, but they still occasionally put out an action-packed rocker. But I think it was pretty much downhill for them after that.

One of my high school teachers noted that Chicago was one of the few major bands in popular music that had lasted 20 years. But they weren't really the same band, as they had so many membership changes.

"Hearts In Trouble" wasn't a really soft ballad, but it's associated with the frustration that coincided with Chicago's decline. A reviewer on Rate Your Music noted, "Great band; lousy track." This record rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but they just can't figure out why. I have to admit that when I used to hear this song, it wasn't under the best circumstances. It was like the grand finale of a series of crises that had built up over the preceding few years.

When I first heard this song, I knew it had to be from a movie. What's more is that I knew it had to be from a film I had no plans to see. Sure enough, it turns out it's from a motion picture titled Days Of Thunder - a movie that I don't even remember existing. On the page for "Hearts In Trouble", another Rate Your Music critic said Chicago "could turn in some of the best jazz/rock on the planet but got reduced to supplying songs for lame, crappy big budget films."

Wikipedia says Billboard reported that this single - even though it went on to peak only at #75 - was one of the most added records to American radio station playlists during the week of July 21, 1990. Oh, I believe that. Memories are long. It also appears to be one of few singles to make the Hot 100 whose flip side was by a different act. Its flip was "Car Building" by German composer Hans Zimmer. Zimmer is known for the quote, "I'd much rather everyone made music as opposed to going and beating the shit out of each other."

But no music today represents the culmination of a crisis, because no crisis today is ever dealt with, and the crisis simply becomes permanent.

"A Girl In Trouble (Is A Temporary Thing)" by Romeo Void

1984 / #35

Rate Your Music score: 3.64 out of 5!

This bouncy record by this San Francisco band is exactly the sort of mid-1980s song that got me interested in lost hits in the first place. It was just a big enough hit that it got a few spins on pop radio, but just minor enough that stations stopped playing it for good after only a few weeks. Most such tracks - like this one - fall into the category of new wave, but perhaps that's because it was the mid-'80s.

Romeo Void's fine single is particularly qualified for this blog because it peaked during a brief window after which life has never been able to recover its former glory. The late 2010s came close in some ways - but just not musically.

It helps that the mid-'80s were a good time for music - even by '80s standards. It beats the ballad-heavy early '80s and the often insufferably stale late '80s. I'm as fond of music from 1983-85 as I am of the great music of 1978-79.

Strangely, I don't ever remember seeing the "A Girl In Trouble" video back in the '80s. However, I seem to recall the instrumental break in the middle being used in an unlikely venue: Not Necessarily The News. I'm pretty sure this show once had a segment in which "A Girl In Trouble" served as the bed music.

Probably my favorite NNTN segment though was a parody of the Civil War Chess Set commercial that used different kinds of cheese as chess pieces, and they leaked all over the board. NNTN also once had a segment called "Senator Hogg" - a reference to Boss Hogg - that used footage of Jesse Helms.

Subscribing to a premium cable channel was a temporary thing. I don't know how much longer we had HBO, but we weren't made of money, and I don't remember ever seeing HBO much after the mid-'80s.