Remembering the songs radio has forgotten.
As a child of the 70s, and specifically, a child whose mother listened to a radio station whose format was called “middle of the road” back then (but would have been called adult contemporary now), I heard quite a bit of music from Captain & Tennille. At the time, though, I had never heard of one of their early hits, “The Way I Want To Touch You”.
Continue reading “The Way I Want to Touch You by Captain & Tennille”
During the long, unplanned hiatus this blog took, George Duke passed away. As I understand it, George Duke was primarily a jazz musician, though he occasionally branched over to pop music and R&B. Most online bios of him will point to his work with Jean-Luc Ponty and Frank Zappa as helping to establish his name in the industry, so that gives you an idea of the diversity of his musical styles.
In the late 1980s, hair bands (or glam metal, or whatever you want to call that type of music) were at the height of their popularity. (The author here takes a moment to remember his now-departed grandfather greeting the image of, I believe, Twisted Sister on his television with “Look at them ugly girls!”) Glam metal was all over the pop charts at the time, thereby making it the perfect time for a girl group called Vixen to make it big. And I suppose they did that, ever so briefly.
Continue reading “Edge of a Broken Heart *and* Cryin’ by Vixen”
I know, En Vogue was so popular that it seems strange to think of any of the group’s smash hits being forgotten. Of course, some of those hits still receive quite a bit of airplay now. “Hold On”, the first of their three #2 hits, still gets some play, as does “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)”, the second. And I suppose their hit with Salt-N-Pepa, “Whatta Man”, is probably still used for any number of bad morning radio show “Battle of the Sexes” games (and I’ve heard it played in full as well).
But think about this before you answer: when was the last time you remember hearing “Free Your Mind” on the radio? If you’re like me, it’s been a very long time. I’m pretty sure I haven’t heard this song get any airplay since the 1990s. It really surprised me to think about that; I would have thought a song with a message like that of “Free Your Mind”, speaking against prejudice, would become a recurrent hit for a while and then end up on your catch-all Jack FM type of station. However, as far as I can tell, it never did. Instead, it just faded away.
“Free Your Mind” was the third song from En Vogue’s very successful second album, Funky Divas. The album had already generated two top ten hits when this song was released (“My Lovin'” being one of them).
(Funky Divas peaked at #8 on the Billboard 200. Album ℗1992 East West Bros. Records. Photo courtesy Amazon.)
“Free Your Mind” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #89 for the week ending September 12, 1992 (chart) and peaked at #8 seven weeks later (chart). The song appeared on the Hot 100 for 20 weeks and was #93 for the year 1992.
En Vogue, of course, continued to have success through most of the 90s, but this song fell by the wayside. It deserved better.
A few years before his former (and future) band released a now-forgotten song, once and present lead singer David Lee Roth had one of his own. He had had a few well-known hits, including a very successful remake of “California Girls”, in the mid-1980s. By the late 80s, however, his solo success was starting to dry up, at least as far as Billboard’s Hot 100 was concerned.
In 1988, Mr. Roth hit the top 40 one last time as a solo artist with “Just Like Paradise”, his highest-charting non-cover. It was the lead single from his album Skyscraper, a fairly successful album that went platinum.
(Skyscraper peaked at #6 on the Billboard 200. Album ℗1988 Warner Bros. Records. Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)
“Just Like Paradise” made a strong entrance into Billboard’s Hot 100 at #56 for the week ending January 16, 1988 (chart) and peaking at #6 the week of March 12 (chart); it also peaked at #1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart. It spent a fairly short 16 weeks in the Hot 100, but it still did well enough to place #97 in the year-end chart.
According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, “Just Like Paradise” had been considered as a potential theme song for a new TV program, “Beverly Hills 90210”. Mr. Roth’s management very helpfully rejected this idea before even talking to Mr. Roth about it. And so, instead of a ten-year run, the song fell rather quickly into obscurity, possibly due to lyrics which, honestly, are not the deepest ever heard (but then, we live in an age in which “Boom Boom Pow”, which I am not linking, is considered good music).
Unlike the last two honorees on this blog, Van Halen is far from a one-hit wonder. I wouldn’t even have thought to include them on a forgotten songs blog, since most of their hits still get airplay on rock/classic rock stations throughout the country. I can name at least ten songs of theirs that still get airplay, and so, most likely, can you. And then there are other songs that I heard back in the day that get no airplay that I know of now, but as it turns out, none of them made the Hot 100 (which, by and large, is one of my big qualifiers for this blog these days).
Midnight Oil, like Baltimora, is seen in the US as a one-hit wonder. Unlike Baltimora’s one hit, however, Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning” still receives a fair amount of airplay, at least in the parts where I live. This is not the case for what was seen by some (such as, for example, myself) as Midnight Oil’s second biggest hit. Sure, at the time, “Blue Sky Mine” received a lot of spins (in the market where I lived at the time, almost all of them were on the alternative station–yes, there were alternative stations in 1990), but since its original run, it has pretty much disappeared.
Interestingly enough, the album from which “Blue Sky Mine” originated, Blue Sky Mining, actually charted higher on the Billboard 200 than Diesel and Dust, from which “Beds Are Burning” came.
(Blue Sky Mining hit #20 on the Billboard 200. Album ℗1990 Columbia Records. Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)
“Blue Sky Mine”, like “Beds Are Burning”, was a song with a message. Whereas “Beds Are Burning” spoke about giving native lands back to indigenous Australians (specifically the Pintupi), “Blue Sky Mine” speaks about workers who are basically treated as a secondary (or tertiary, or worse) concern after profit, in this case through the real history of blue asbestos mining in Wittenoom, Western Australia. Asbestos, as many people know, can cause all sorts of diseases or other health problems, particularly for miners who are breathing it all the time with little to no respite. As commenter “jlc01” at songmeanings.net relates:
It wasn’t until 20 years later that the CSR actually built vents so that miners could breathe fresh air.
And that’s just sad.
CSR, the owner, was referred to in the song as the “sugar refining company” owing to its original name, which was the Colonial Sugar Refining company. It should be noted that in recent years CSR has paid out a lot of money to people affected by the Wittenoom disaster, but it appears, from what I have read, that they have done so very unwillingly. As for the mine itself, it closed in 1966, with residents being encouraged to leave over the next few years owing to the general contamination of the area. Wittenoom itself is no longer even recognized as an official town and has been removed from road maps. Truly a sad episode of history.
And as for the song, “Blue Sky Mine” hit Billboard’s Hot 100 in early 1990, debuting at #77 for the week ending February 17 (chart), peaking at #47 (which means that we never got to hear Shadoe Stevens announcing it) for the week ending March 24 (chart), and remaining on the chart for ten weeks. I would classify this as a song which should have been a bigger hit.
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Baltimora, at least in the US, was definitely a one-hit wonder. Interestingly enough, though, its one hit, “Tarzan Boy”, made it to Billboard’s Hot 100 on two separate occasions. (Okay, yes, they made the Hot 100 with one other song, the title track to their first album, but they are known almost entirely in this country for “Tarzan Boy”.)
The name Jamie Walters probably is not familiar to people who either did not watch Fox or listen to top 40 radio in the early 90s. And, even if you did listen to top 40 radio in the early 90s, you might have missed Mr. Walters. After all, his first, and biggest, hit wasn’t even released under his name, but, instead, under the name of the Fox television program on which Mr. Walters had a starring role, The Heights. (Ironically, the show was cancelled the week after “How Do You Talk to an Angel”, its theme, fell out of the number one position.)
Todd Rundgren is probably known for several songs released over the course of his career. I can think of three very quickly: “Hello It’s Me”, “I Saw the Light”, and “Bang the Drum All Day” (the last of which can be heard most commonly around 5:00 on Friday afternoon every single week). All of those, as far as I can tell, still get quite a bit of airplay. But do you remember 1978’s “Can We Still Be Friends?”
Continue reading “Can We Still Be Friends? by Todd Rundgren”
