"Kiss You Back" by Digital Underground

1991 / #40

Rate Your Music score: 3.54 out of 5!

This lost hit straddles the frontier between the first and second generations of lost hits, as it was on the chart when Billboard made its much-ballyhooed change to its Hot 100 methodology. I think I heard it on the car radio one Saturday when we drove to Michigan and back and we were heading home through the Detroit area. I also remember that there was a dense layer of fog throughout the entire outing. This would have been a different event from a few months earlier when we drove through Detroit, which was one of very few times I ever heard a radio commercial for condoms.

Instead of "Kiss You Back" though, we may have just as much cause to focus on a much more well-known Digital Underground hit: "The Humpty Dance." The reason I'm not giving it its own entry is that I think it still gets some airplay on regular radio - seemingly more than it did when it was a current hit.

"The Humpty Dance" was a hit during my unfortunate dealings with a money-grubbing far-right cult just before junior year of high school. The controversy there was centered on the line, "I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom." One of the surest ways to get staffers to fall into a screeching temper tantrum was to parody that line by using the names of other fast food restaurants.

"I once got busy in a McDonald's bathroom."

"I once got busy in a Taco Bell bathroom."

"I once got busy in a Long John Silver's bathroom."

"I once got busy in an Arby's bathroom."

A similar technique involving the commercials for Sesame Street Band-Aids raised staffers' ire. You wouldn't believe the fit that they threw. The commersh had a jingle that went, "I am stuck on Big Bird 'cause Big Bird's stuck on me." It also named other lovable Sesame Street Muppets. We all got in trouble because we kept singing the jingle with different Muppets.

"I am stuck on Oscar 'cause Oscar's stuck on me."

"I am stuck on Guy Smiley 'cause Guy Smiley's stuck on me."

"I am stuck on Amazing Mumford 'cause Amazing Mumford's stuck on me."

Those staffers got mad at the weirdest things.

"Tell Me Why" by Exposé

1989 / #9

Rate Your Music: 2.72 out of 5!

"Tell me why...Oh won't you please tell me why..."

This lost hit has a story similar to that of "Skin Trade" by Duran Duran.

It's another vignette about my high school principal and his infamous temper. Recently, it occurred to me that he would have been perfect for right-wing talk radio. He had the right theatrics and intonation. Instead of the big stations though, he would have been better for one of those fringe stations that operated under the guise of religion and had its own parallel universe alongside the major stations.

Not long ago, I read that the format for one of the stations like that around here was instituted by a group of investors led by a well-known local industrialist who wanted a right-wing station but wanted to cloak it under the label of a ministry. My principal had sort of a messiah complex, so he would have been a good fit for that station. It would have been better for society for him to spew bullshit on a station that nobody listened to than for him to run a high school where he ruined so many young lives.

Also, while the aforementioned investors owned the station, their company was also one of the biggest donors to the effort to pass an anti-gay referendum in Cincinnati. But that's another sorry topic for another venue.

How does all of this fit in with Exposé's lost hit? A key set of lines in the chorus is, "Tell me why...Oh won't you please tell me why." This sounds like something my principal would have said when very frustrated - as he often was. He may have actually said it, but I think it was just someone doing an impression of him. I can just see him saying it as he stabbed the air with his hand.

I think the version of the song in the video was the one most stations played. An exception was Power 94½, which played a slightly different mix, which I never heard anywhere else. I think Q-102 used the same version that was in the video, when they started playing the song about 6 months later.

"Infatuation" by Rod Stewart

1984 / #6

Rate Your Music: 2.76 out of 5!

"Oh no! Not again!"

With a song titled "Infatuation" being unleashed on a world full of 11-year-olds who were obsessed with fart jokes, you can see exactly where this entry is headed.

This is one song where the parodies just wrote themselves. It was even more obvious than when "King Of Pain" by the Police was rewritten as "King Of Stain" with the opening line, "There's a little brown spot in my pants today."

Nobody could agree on what the title of a fart-related parody of "Infatuation" should be. It was everything between "Flatuation" and "Deflatulation." I seem to remember a local news anchor many years later reporting on a police officer who "flatuated" in a DUI suspect's face. I also remember an earlier elementary school teacher talking about how we should never say that someone "farted" but rather that they "flatulated."

As for the Rod Stewart parodies that were extant in 1984, the only line I can remember is, "Maybe it's cookies, maybe it's beans." Kids probably made flexagons to try to come up with random lines - sort of like Mad Libs. So the next line may have been something about checking your jeans or how something smells mean. Maybe it was something about how the stench made everyone flee the scene or how you should eat more greens or how you might rupture your spleen. Maybe it was something about a latrine.

Oh no! Not again!

"Read 'Em And Weep" by Barry Manilow

1983 / #18

Rate Your Music score: 3 out of 5!

Believe it or don't, I actually have the 45 of this. This record was also Barry Manilow's last top 40 hit - though he managed to reach the Hot 100 as late as 1988.

And the video was absolutely, positively ridiculous beyond description. I remember seeing the video on Solid Gold and thinking it was ridiculous then. It reminded me of some of the Solid Gold Dancers' "interpretations" of songs included on the show. Don't get me wrong: They were talented dancers. Just like how Barry is a talented singer. But their works appeared in contexts that were often pretty silly.

It seems like several years later, some of my peers planned to use a similar concept for some performance, but they goofed off so much that the event never took place. I'm not even sure what their point was going to be.

Barry's record was written and produced by Jim Steinman, who did a lot of work for Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler. One of Jim's trademarks was the type of thunderous, dramatic arrangement that we hear on "Read 'Em And Weep", especially during the song's bridge.

The main reason I'm giving this lost hit an entry on this blog is that it was played at a family wedding I attended in the early 1990s where I almost ate one of the small plastic birds from the cake. Each guest received a generous slice of the wedding cake. The reception hall was very dark, and the white plastic birds blended in with the white icing. So I could barely see the birds, let alone see that they were plastic.

After chewing on the bird for several minutes and not being able to swallow it, I finally realized it was plastic. I think I decided to chew on it a little bit more like it was bubble gum. But you couldn't blow bubbles with it.

Read it and weep!

"Candy Girl" by New Edition

1983 / #46

Rate Your Music score: 2.89 out of 5!

This Boston group was still teenagers in 1983. Many years after the group's heyday, I mentioned in an online forum that this now-lost hit used to be played on WCLU. Somebody insisted that no top 40 station outside New England would have ever played this record. But now, ARSA has some old WCLU surveys, and one of these surveys begs to differ.

The record is still known for its innovative production elements that inspired a generation of music. For instance, at 39 seconds in, there's this sigh of refreshment, like that sound you make after you take a big gulp of a cold beverage. It was the same sound we made when we went to the drinking fountain in high school and wanted to disturb some classes.

Another example is at 2:44. We hear some element that sounds like it's either vocals imitating an instrument, or an instrument imitating vocals. For years, whenever something gets spilled or something valuable gets destroyed, the fanfare from the Sesame Street segments where the baker falls down the steps has played in my head. The sound from "Candy Girl" is sort of like that. It actually sounds like it's laughing at someone because of some misfortune. Think if Charlie Brown's teacher laughed at somebody because they split their pants.

You're gonna lose control!

"Midnite Maniac" by Krokus

1984 / #71

Rate Your Music score: 3.17 out of 5!

Here's another lost hit that had a "Take It Away" moment of sorts.

This track was by the hard rock band from Switzerland named Krokus. As it happens, there's a flower called a crocus. This gave rise to an incident that took place in biology class when I was a high school sophomore only a few years after this record was a hit.

That class was insufferable. Everything about that school was, but particularly this class. It was a disaster from day one, and was never anything else. But one day, the teacher mentioned a crocus. As soon as that word was uttered, I knew exactly what would happen next.

True to form, I heard someone go, "Midnite maniac!" They sang it in the same style that Krokus did.

But the teacher didn't seem to notice. He also didn't notice on the day he got out his briefcase in class, and I chanted, "Briefcase full of bluuuuues..." This was inspired by the title of the Blues Brothers' debut album.

I forgot about the crocus incident until many years later when I had a work assignment. This was at the Department of the Interior gig that the George W. Bush regime unceremoniously discontinued (and which everyone neglected me on anyway). I found that there was a street in Taylor Mill called Crocus Lane. When I discovered this, I went, "Midnite maniac!"

Did you read it in the paper 'bout the danger comin' your way?

"No More Rhyme" by Debbie Gibson

1989 / #17

Rate Your Music Score: 2.97 out of 5!

By the end of the 1980s, pop radio was grasping at youth but had so little knowledge of what was hip that it buried itself in a cloud of sawdust.

There were a lot of young acts then whose fan base was generally much younger than the performers themselves. Debbie Gibson was only 19 in 1989, but by then, I considered myself too grownup to regularly listen to acts like Debbie. When "No More Rhyme" was on the chart, I was more interested in then-current hits by John Mellencamp, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, Living Colour, Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, and the Bangles.

The real problems for me though came in 1990. I spent the summer being subjected to an organization that called me a liar right to my face because I dared to report the things that had taken place at my high school. There were witnesses, by the way, so anyone who says it didn't happen can shut their noisemaker now. I never went to any of my school dances, because I just wasn't interested, but this organization did have maybe 2 or 3 dances that I was at. But none of them was really much of a dance.

Remember the video of the prom in the early 2020s where kids were ridiculing the social distancing fad by dancing with their backs to each other? Well, the dances I went to were just as laughable. I don't think this organization even knew what a dance was.

A few months before, my high school had a dance that became the butt of jokes because the DJ only played old standards from the big band era instead of modern music. But one of the dances I attended at the organization that I was subjected to during the summer had the opposite problem. This kooky cult considered most current popular music too subversive and immoral for 17-year-olds. So the only pop music it allowed was acts like New Kids On The Block and Debbie Gibson that had a much younger fan base. These performers were considered innocent and safe to listen to.

A woman who worked there and was in charge of gym activities served as the DJ for this dance. All the music she played was too immature for older teenagers. So everyone just ignored the music. Instead, people just sulked and stewed about how lifeless this so-called dance was, and how we were being treated like kindergartners.

When we got near the end of the dance, the woman made a big issue of how there was only one song left. It was going to be a "special" tune. Nobody was paying attention though. But guess what song it was?

Yep. "No More Rhyme."

The woman made such a big deal out of playing the final song for the evening, only for it to be "No More Rhyme"! By that time though, nobody had high hopes for anything more mature.

At least I was around peers who knew how to act right - unlike at my old high school.