Sean’s Lost Factor Favorites

Throughout our year of Lost Factor calculations, it has generally been easy to say why some big or almost-big hits are missing from the radio now. Some genres — female pop whether from 1974 or 1982 — are unjustly ignored. Most teen idols of the ’70s didn’t get the same chance to reinvent themselves as Justin Timberlake or Britney Spears did. Some songs were polarizing even at the time. It’s OK with me that “I’ve Never Been to Me” isn’t a Classic Hits radio staple today. But after calculating the Lost Factor of 2,500 songs, there are certainly songs that deserve to be more heard now.

When I first conceived of this column, choosing 10 favorites from the Top 100 Lost Factor Songs of the ‘70s, ‘80s, or early ‘90s. I was looking for undisputable “good songs,” ones that were in no way risible. Then I decided to open it up to your lists as well. In doing so, it became clear that anybody’s list was going to have a few truly great songs and one or two in the “I like it anyway” category; such are childhood attachments to music.

It’s difficult to be objective when you get to soft pop and especially balladry. I didn’t like Sheena Easton’s “Morning Train (9 To 5),” when I first heard it on UK radio or when it came to America. I didn’t like the follow up, “Modern Girl.” I don’t like “When He Shines” or “Almost Over You.” “You Could Have Been With Me,” however, is a favorite, especially among songs with a high Lost Factor. I came to like Easton a lot when she changed her style in the mid-‘80s; she’s one of the many female artists I’m sorry to see recurring so often in our Lost Factor calculations.

When I asked readers to vote for their top five, I kept it to those songs that had made the all-decade top 100s for the ‘70s and ‘80s, as well as the top 60 for 1990-94. There were a few songs that made the year-end “Lost Factor” calculations, but not the decade lists, that I wanted to advocate for as well. “They Don’t Know” by Tracey Ullman was a good example of a song music writers liked at the time; the worst thing ever said about it was “I liked the Kirsty MacColl original better.” When I first calculated 1984, “They Don’t Know” didn’t seem to fit the pattern of typical Lost Factor toppers, but it was soft female pop, and it was a song that never made it to power rotation.

Johnnie Taylor’s “Disco Lady” is another record that I think deserves better: the first platinum single; the song where Southern soul met the players from Parliament/Funkadelic. You’ve heard that part, but also know that when I was working for an R&B Oldies station in Chicago in the mid-‘90s, it was the song that reliably filled the dance floor. But the “shake it up/shake it down” hook was annoying to some even in 1976.

It’s easy to name a favorite Lost Factor artist. Olivia Newton-John’s hits have been prominently “lost” since our first column, which was prompted to begin with by mega-hit “Physical” disappearing from the radio over the years. ONJ made consistently strong singles for 15 years. She was early in her appreciation of Country and folk, including being one of the first to cover “Jolene.” Her Grease-era reinvention was the model for every pop-artist transition of the last decade. If it seems blunt to say that an artist who has publicly battled breast cancer several times deserves her flowers now, dammit, it is also the case that most of her contemporaries are at least in their 70s now; Lost Factor is, in part, a way of appreciating all of those who are still among us.

The term “Lost 45,” as popularized by (still very active) Boston-based radio host Barry Scott starting in the mid-‘80s, covers a wider swath of songs than “Lost Factor.” I have a lot of favorites of the sort that peaked somewhere between No. 15 and 30 and never made the year-end countdown. I didn’t get to calculate a Lost Factor for “Emma” by Hot Chocolate or “Love Really Hurts Without You” by Billy Ocean, but they would both make this list if they qualified. “British R&B songs that were minor hits in America” is a small but mighty category for me. “Up in a Puff of Smoke” by Polly Brown also qualifies. So does my No. 2 Lost Factor song. (I’ve made a YouTube playlist of all these songs, as well as the ones you voted for.)

1 – Mel & Tim, “Starting All Over Again” (1972) – An example of how my tastes matured. It was a sophisticated lyric for a nine-year-old to appreciate, although it was one of my mom’s favorites, so it stayed in the consideration set until I understood what they were talking about. One of several early-‘70s “Lost Factor” titles that didn’t fully cross over in every market. It also makes perfect sense that Daryl Hall & John Oates, heavily represented in our Lost Factor calculations as well, remade this song near the end of their hit streak, but did not chart at CHR with it.

2 – Mac & Katie Kissoon, “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” (1971) – An example of how my tastes never matured. If I were ranking only by pure enjoyment over the years, it would probably be No. 1, but unlike Mel & Tim, I understand other people’s potential objections. I’ve come to think of it as a piece with “Double Barrel,” “How Do You Do,” “Pata Pata,” “Funky Nassau,” “Jungle Fever,” and “Soul Makossa” — all late ‘60s/early ‘70s songs that had both world-music and bubblegum aspects, although some emerged from the decade with hipper credentials than others. 

3 – Ray Parker Jr., “The Other Woman” (1982) – Along with Olivia Newton-John, Parker is one of the artists who features far too prominently in our Lost Factor calculations, trapped between pop and R&B radio. Some of the best Raydio/solo Ray Parker singles are R&B hits only, and a few were the funky instrumental workouts on their B-sides, thus obscuring his catalog a little to begin with. “The Other Woman” was a huge and badly needed radio hit at a time when Top 40 was grudgingly beginning to deal with R&B again. It was easily one of the best songs on the radio in spring ’82, especially when the song it followed was often likely to be “I’ve Never Been to Me.”

4 – Bangles, “In Your Room” (1988) – When label executives charge a band to come up with a first single for the follow-up to a breakthrough album, this is exactly what they have in mind. “In Your Room” is fun, punchy, and not exactly like anything on the preceding album. It got caught in a place where lightweight uptempo pop wasn’t hip enough to compete with “Bust a Move” or “Welcome to the Jungle.” Yet, there was still plenty of room for pop balladry (including “Look Away”), which means that “Eternal Flame” was the hit. “In Your Room” still went top 5 on artist momentum, but it was destined to be lost because it never went to power rotation in most places; listeners didn’t hear it much.

5 – Corina, “Temptation” (1991) – It was one of a dozen indie-label freestyle dance hits that were on WQHT (Hot 97) New York at any time in that era. By the time it crossed to Top 40 WHTZ (Z100) and WPLJ, there was already a bidding war. It sounded a lot like Lisette Melendez’s “Together Forever,” but I somehow find that song droning and sorrowful, but this one fun and energizing. You might disagree, if you even remember it. In New York, freestyle hits like these did get to power rotation, but not to gold, especially since Hot 97, Z100, and WPLJ would all change their musical direction in a year or so.

6 – Gilbert O’Sullivan, “Get Down” (1973) – I experienced ‘70s pop radio uncritically, and this song just seemed silly, plus “Alone Again (Naturally)” really wasn’t for a nine-year-old either. When I went back a decade later and listened to airchecks with intent, this song sounded pretty great coming out of a shotgun jingle. So did dozens of other ‘70s songs that I finally gave myself permission to like.

7 – Linda Ronstadt, “How Do I Make You” (1980) – As 1980 dawned, there were two soft-rock superstars whose last projects had done just fine but had felt like “more of the same” after their previous blockbusters. That winter, Linda Ronstadt and Billy Joel both revitalized their careers by co-opting new wave’s energy. In my hometown of Washington, D.C., Top 40 and rock radio made local hits out of album cuts on both Mad Love and Glass Houses — her version of “Girls Talk”; his “Sometimes a Fantasy.” Both artists ventured out again in 1982 with projects that were relative disappointments. The next year, Joel went to the ‘60s for “An Innocent Man” and earned another five years of multi-format stardom; Ronstadt retreated to the ‘40s, and while she would have a few more pop hits in 1987-89, What’s New effectively finalized her divorce from rock radio, which is one reason why Mad Love feels like it never existed today. It’s an underrated favorite and a fun half-hour listen now.

8 – Lobo, “Don’t Expect Me to Be Your Friend” (1973) – In the early ‘70s, pop listeners experienced soft-rock singer-songwriters as of a piece. The tiers that separate Elton John (still OK for Classic Rock) from James Taylor and America (not as hip but still heard on soft Classic Rock stations) from Lobo and Bread (now grouped with “never rock” artists like the Carpenters) took years to calcify. Like Bread’s “Everything I Own,” this is a quality, timeless lyric that taps into an emotion not often expressed in pop hits. But you may lump it in with “Torn Between Two Lovers.” 

9 – Stars on 45, “Medley” (1981) –  It’s easily relegated to novelty-song hell if you don’t like it, or particularly if you didn’t live through it as a current. I remember it as a great Top 40 radio moment in a summer where we needed every one of them. It was a blast of uptempo Europop energy just as Abba’s hit streak was coming to an end. In the ’00s, it was a secret weapon for KRTH (K-Earth 101) Los Angeles for a while. For better and worse, a predecessor of the cut-and-paste way we use music now.

10 – Lamont Dozier, “Trying to Hold On to My Woman” (1973) – The Holland/Dozier/Holland songwriting team left Motown and formed two imprints (Invictus and Hot Wax) whose output would be legendary if those labels were anything other than “HDH’s next projects.” Dozier had his own streak of classic R&B hits, including “Fish Ain’t Bitin’,” which called for, and got, the resignation of a sitting president. “Trying to Hold On” is the sort of emotionally charged ballad that can be polarizing even to R&B fans, but, like Mel & Tim, it’s “Lost” mostly because it didn’t get played by pop radio everywhere. This was No. 1 on CKLW when I discovered that radio station, which probably informs its presence here.