Raised by Radio

I miss that feeling!! That feeling when a song just grabs you! That you hear it for the first time!! But then the opposite feeling when your favorite station just stops playing it. And it drops off AT 40, even Casey is not playing it anymore!! And you start to find out at a young age how subjective music is. It’s personal. It’s what you like, and at a young age, you cannot understand why someone else doesn’t like the song you like…how dare they?? It’s even hard when you are an adult…for the record, my wife doesn’t like the three songs I’m gonna highlight now. In my own house…really??

Ok…who remembers the group from 1974 Sweet Sensation? No… not the trio that had a bunch of hits in the 80’s (Hooked on You/If Wishes Came True, which went to #1) and they were from my hometown in the Bronx, not this group was a Soul group from Manchester, Britain. I think they sounded and maybe fashioned themselves after the 5th Dimension. Their song was “Sad, Sweet Dreamer”. I fell in love with this very different sounding song the second I heard it! It made it up to #14 nationally but really wasn’t played much at all on NY Radio.

Unlike Sweet Sensation, most of us knew The Righteous Brothers. They had huge hits in the 60’s with such a unique sound. Who can forget “Unchained Melody”, “Soul and Inspiration”, and “You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling”. Well, they were on the comeback trail in 1974 and I fell in love with a song called “Dream On”…oh man that song sounded so different! It’s gonna be a big hit! Nope…it peaked at #32.

The last one for now is back in the 80’s. Sort of an unknown group in the US, this one blows my mind because we missed it. It gets played more now that it did when it was out. NY Radio played it but I never heard it on AT 40. That’s because it only made it to #76 on the Hot 100!! Can’t be true right?? You guessed it…I’m talking about “I Melt With You” by Modern English. Head Scratcher!!!

I’d love to hear from you…what songs did you love that just died on the charts?

Here are the videos to those songs: