No surprise here, but oldies radio doesn’t play all the oldies. You’ll hear Electric Light Orchestra’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” a million times before “Strange Magic” ever pops up. Who’s the band in the pic up there? Exactly. The Sylvers had three Top 40 hits in 1976 and 1977, but you’re probably not going to hear them outside of a “Saturday Night Disco” specialty show. (Yep, they’re all brothers and sisters.)

Sean Ross writes the Ross on Radio column and recently broke down what he considers the songs of 1975-1979 with the biggest Lost Factor – “songs have the widest gap between hit status then and a lack of airplay today.” Go check out the full list, but here’s three personal favorites.

Donny and Marie, Bay City Rollers, and Shaun Cassidy all lost staying power for being so tied into the Teen Beat pop of the ’70s and their squeaky clean images. You grow out of sweetie Scott Baio and grow into sweaty Robert Plant. I insist this Shaun Cassidy #1 is still a fun bit of cotton candy. It’s produced by Michael Lloyd, who also was behind Belinda Carlisle’s “Mad About You” and “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from “Dirty Dancing.”

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I’ve been lucky enough to work with a lot of talented people on projects big and small. Today, the story of meeting a band I loved in high school and making an unofficial video for one of their songs.

Senior year of high school, the fall of 1984, must be when I first heard Los Lobos. “Will the Wolf Survive? didn’t hit big on radio, but it got constant MTV play. It’s about trying to preserve Mexican culture while living in mainstream America. It’s also a metaphor for musicians who want to be heard. A white high school kid in Iowa can’t relate directly, but I think everybody knows about feeling like an outsider.

Not long later, Los Lobos’ biggest commercial success was their 1987 cover of “La Bamba,” from the Ritchie Valens biopic starring Lou Diamond Phillips.

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You didn’t think this 1982 Top 20 hit from Steel Breeze was Rick Springfield, did ya?

It’s mostly the chorus that sounds Springfieldian, but I would swear I had a Limewire download that said it was Rick.

Remember Blessid Union of Souls and “I Believe?”

I’m linking out to the version of the “I Believe” video that uses the original album track. Until writing this, I didn’t realize until there was a radio edit. That version has the lyric “One day, daddy’s gonna find out she’s in love with a brother from the streets.” On the album, it’s not “brother.”

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I’m a lyrics guy, but the right melody can travel the globe.

In 1985, Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus” went to #1 in the USA, even though most of the lyrics are in German. Four years earlier, Falco’s “Der Kommissar,” also in German, was a smash across Europe, but stalled at #72 in the states.
My high school Deutsch ist vergessen, but “Der Kommissar” tells the story of a woman who really likes cocaine, has friends who died from cocaine, and is getting hassled by a police “commissioner.”

Then, in 1982, British band After the Fire rewrote “Der Kommissar” with English lyrics that tell the same basic story. Cocaine is still “sugar” and “snow.” This time, the song went to #5 in America.

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