I’m thinking of songs that made it high on the charts, maybe even stayed there for weeks, but just don’t get remembered. Aren’t often played on classic rock/oldies/whatever-you-call-it stations and even moreso, aren’t used in movie soundtracks or period pieces to denote the era.
And then, the follow up is which ones you think deserve to be remembered. I’d prefer that to be deserving to be remembered within its own genre, so that every single pop song doesn’t get crapped on as unworthy of remembrance.
Lots of one hit wonders here. I will nominate the1970 song ‘Hocus Pocus’ by the Dutch progressive rock band Focus. I seldom hear this one played on oldies stations.
The 60s through 80s is a long and varied time period as far as music goes, so I’ll only answer for the parts I grew up with, mostly in the 1985-1989 time period.
I think the style of music produced in the late 80s by Stock, Aitken, and Waterman is underrated. Their most famous songs were sung by Rick Astley, Never Gonna Give You Up now famous mostly because of the Rick Roll, and Together Forever.. They wrote several other songs in a similar style for other artists, including Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. IMHO one of their best works, however, was I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt, sung by Donna Summer in 1989.
R.E.M.'s 1986 song “Fall On Me” should have been their biggest, and best-remembered, hit. Many agree with me. There’s a poll out there of favorite REM songs that thousands participated in, and it came in #1. And, plenty of testimonials like this one:
This post emphasizes to me that I have no clue which songs did or did not “endure.” I’ve never heard of the first one, but the other three are familiar enough that they immediately started playing in my mind when I saw the titles.
Still, that may just be because I heard them so often back in the 1970s that they got permanently lodged in my brain. I don’t remember actually hearing them any time recently. But if I remember them well, surely others do too?
These two are regularly played on the very popular German oldie station WDR4 (mostly 60s, 70s and 80s hits). May well be that “Mississippi” (nitpick: the name of the band is just Pussycat) was the much bigger hit here than in the US (it was a Dutch band and I remember well when it was a hit). For “Top Of The World” I have no explanation other that it’s a beautiful song, I don’t remember it from back in the day, and I see that it peaked only at #38 in the German charts in 1974.
ETA: just checked: “Mississippi” was #1 and 32 weeks in the charts in 1976.
Over the last two or three years, radio columnist Sean Ross has written a series of articles on lost hits, covering the early 1960s through the 2000s decade. He devised a scale showing how “lost” each hit is, by comparing its position in the year-end Billboard chart with the number of spins the song got on the radio in the week before each column was written. Below is a link with a compilation of some of these columns (the columns that will be the most interesting are under the “Lost Hits Articles Focusing On Decades” heading):
This is exactly the song that first popped into my head on reading the OP, and unlike others here, I haven’t heard it in a long time.
I don’t listen to broadcast radio much, I mostly ask Alexa for music either from my own collection or from Amazon Music (and not even Unlimited), so my universe of tunes is somewhat limited.
But Amazon plays Brandy rather frequently when I ask for classic rock or 70s rock.
The part about not being played it a tough one for me. I don;t listen enopugh to know for sure. B ut…
Looking at the 1969 Top 100 of the year, I would vote for, in the category of “top but forgotten, but should be remembered”:
Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James. I think it’s better than Crimson and Clover (well,not better than Joan Jett’s version.). It really “sounds” like the 60s.
Grazing in the Grass. By Friends of Distinction. Maybe instrumentals have a harder time surviving. I think it is comparable to Green Onions as a catchy, period-setting song.
Several instrumental hits from the 1960s seldom get oldies play; “The Lonely Surfer” by Jack Nitzsche, “Out of Limits” by The Marketts, Herb Alpert’s incredible run of hits, and innumerable other hits pouring out of Gold Star studios featuring the Wrecking Crew under made-up band names.
Adding to the list of surf rock hits I wouldn’t mind hearing more often: Pipeline, originally recorded in '62 by the Chantays, though the best version may be this one by Dick Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughan, released in 1987:
*little known fact: The Chantays made an appearance on the Lawrence Welk Show playing “Pipeline”. I would link to the video but it is ghastly.
I’ll beg everyone’s forgiveness, since I’ve mentioned this song a few times before in other threads.
“She Sheila” by The Producers (1982). It didn’t dominate the charts or anything, but the song and video were EVERYWHERE, primarily due to MTV. For several months, I could not go to the local sports bar for lunch without seeing the video every day. And while the video is nothing special, it’s memorable enough. Plus, it’s just a catchy song. I mean, they headlined the MTV NYE show.
I can’t tell you how many people my age or slightly younger tell me they have absolutely no recollection of the song, the video, or the group. More surprisingly, these are often people who pride themselves on being “children of the 80s” and brag on their deep knowledge of 80s music and videos. It’s almost as if aliens decided to wipe it from their collective memories. And I hardly ever hear it on Sirius or see the video on MTV Classic.
