My posts about obscure ‘80s songs (here and here) are far more popular than those about sleazy robocallers, and so I bring you another one today. This one dives farther into the depths of obscurity by focusing on those non-hits that made it only as far as “Bubbling Under.” Bubbling Under is not just the name of a gross prank in which Alka-Seltzer tablets are tossed into an outhouse. It’s also a long-running Billboard magazine feature that lists the songs that are on the brink of making it to the big-time Hot 100 rankings. They will be hits if they get just a little nudge from radio (1980s) or from TikTok (2020s).
Billboard published a Bubbling Under chart until August 1985, and then abruptly discontinued it due to unspecified changes in the music industry. Probably, the labels were no longer paying sufficient bribe money to promote their records. Bubbling Under returned in 1992, but by that time most people had turned to binge drinking to fill the aching hole that the chart’s absence had left.
I recently listened to all of the Bubbling Under tunes from the 1980s, and I was met with two very nice surprises. The first big shock was that I was able to find all of these songs on YouTube, albeit sometimes with major quality issues. (Here’s a tip for collectors: The top of the furnace isn’t the best place to keep your Jimmy Spheeris records.) The second surprise is that most of the songs that peaked in the #101 to #110 range of the Billboard chart are really not as bad as you would expect. I could think of only six for a “worst” list (keep reading), and only one or two of those were true crimes against humanity.
There were many ‘80s classics that didn’t go any higher than Bubbling Under, including songs by the Talking Heads, David Bowie, George Clinton, Billy Idol, and The Cure. Some of the bubbling tunes attained later glory by being re-released, remade, or sampled in huge rap hits. And some just stand out as interesting records that were never given a fair chance, and that linger in obscurity today. I’ve picked out my five favorites from this last category for my list, along with a slew of honorable mentions. Here we go.
THE BEST OF THE BUBBLING UNDER
“Won’t Give It Up” by Sue Saad and the Next (1980)
This is a tuneful California power-pop song that should have been a hit on top 40 radio, if not for the identity crisis the format was experiencing at the time. It’s not clear what this band could have done differently to break through all of the lite-rock ballads to get onto the airwaves. They even posed for the mandatory ridiculous album cover, with the lead singer wearing leather pants, and it couldn’t get them past #107 on the charts.
“Tommy, Judy & Me” by Rob Hegel (1980)
Rob Hegel is from Centerville, Ohio, where I once worked a dispiriting contract job at a software company whose name rhymes with “vex us sexless”. His one charted song as an artist has an incredibly powerful and memorable chorus. The rest of the song is not as strong musically, but the lyrics more than make up for it. In the first verse we are introduced to the characters, a trio of promiscuous high school students who experiment with “the strangest positions.” In the second verse we learn that one of them is planning a mass shooting. How could anyone change the station without hearing what happens next?
We were never given that opportunity because even Hegel, a former record label promotions guy, couldn’t sell this type of content to the wimps at radio. Dick Clark supposedly loved the tune and wanted it performed on American Bandstand, but the network objected to the lyrics and made Hegel lip-synch two lesser tracks instead. The song would have also benefited from better production, leading Hegel to make several other recordings of it in later years. He did eventually get a top 40 hit as a songwriter for Air Supply, with a tender love ballad that avoided any mention of a mass shooting.
“Hometown Girls” by Benny Mardones (1980)
This rock-leaning pop song might have been a little ahead of its time. It sounds like something Henry Lee Summer would have recorded in 1988. That may seem sarcastic, but I mean it as a compliment. It’s a shame that it didn’t have the success that it deserved, leaving Mardones as a one-hit wonder who was constantly forced to defend his one hit. All of those radio programmers who loved “Into the Night” but wouldn’t play “Tommy, Judy & Me” are huge hypocrites.
“Second Choice” by Any Trouble (1981)
This song is a little simplistic, but it is as catchy as a pair of Velcro-lined underpants. I’m not sure why it peaked at #108. Maybe because the lead singer looks more like a high school chemistry teacher than a rock star?
“Just Another Saturday Night” by Alex Call (1983)
Alex Call is best known for writing the Tommy Tutone hit “867-5309 / Jenny”, which is perhaps the best ever upbeat rock song to be based on a truly disturbing concept. “Just Another Saturday Night” takes things a step further:
Just your average teenage murder
The twenty-second one this year
They say the killer was loaded on PCP
But the others were just drunk on beer
This record would have sounded fantastic blasting out of the FM stereo on a Trans Am in the summer of ’83, but there was no subtlety in the lyrics. Call’s previous song was already responsible for millions of obscene phone calls and thousands of incidents of restroom graffiti. Would there be a wave of homicides if this one were allowed on the air? America couldn’t take the risk, so we were instead subjected to “Every Breath You Take” five times every hour. Time to trade in the Trans Am for a golf cart.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
“You Got It (Release It)” by Pearl Harbor & the Explosions (1980) – This is another nice little power-pop song. I guess the title made people think of farting, so it wasn’t given a chance. (Never mind that “In the Air Tonight” and “Wind Beneath My Wings” were both big hits.) It’s also a bad idea to name your band after a tragedy that killed 2,000 people. A better name would have been “Katrina & the Waves”.
“Don’t Fight It” by Red Rider (1980) – If Neil Diamond played harder rock and moved to Canada, he might sound a little like Tom Cochrane does on this song.
“It’s All Over” by Willie Nile (1980) – If the Traveling Wilburys all had a child together through some sick genetic experiment, their offspring might sound a little like Willie Nile does on this song.
“Uptown” by Prince (1980) – It’s always neat to discover a “new” song from someone familiar, especially when it isn’t self-indulgent crap like it usually turns out to be.
“Stranded in the Moonlight” by Jet (1981) – The vocal on this record is not bad at all, but I can imagine Heart doing it even better and having a top 10 hit.
“Doo Wa Ditty (Blow That Thing)” by Zapp (1982) – Roger Troutman’s funk band Zapp was a frequent inmate in Bubbling Under purgatory throughout the early 1980s, along with Smokey Robinson. This enjoyable but meandering track survived ignominy to be used as the hook for Paperboy’s “Ditty” ten years later.
“Smile” by Was (Not Was) with Doug Fieger (1983) – Here’s yet another halfway decent power-pop effort that couldn’t gain any traction. By 1983 the media was pushing the narrative that the Carter years were the worst disaster since the bubonic plague, and that any cultural relics from the late 1970s needed to be suppressed. Having the guy from The Knack sing on your record wasn’t going to get you any airplay.
“Bop Girl” by Pat Wilson (1984) – Although it’s a fun listen, this is a pretty stupid song. What in the hell is a bop girl, and why would the whole world be searching for one? But it was no dumber than most of the songs on U.S. radio, and it should have been a hit here like it was in Australia. Watch the video without looking at the comments, and see if you recognize the tall teenage girl.
“Saddest Victory” by Sandy Stewart (1984) – Fleetwood Mac was one of those bands, like the Eagles, that had other musicians hanging around waiting for the success to rub off on them. This song by Stevie Nicks’s friend merited some of that success, but didn’t get it.
“Just a Dream” by Nena (1984) – What makes Nena so appealing is that she really can’t speak English, so she learns the lyrics phonetically and gives them a unique spin. She reminds me of an ‘80s cover band from the Philippines who I heard singing the line “Tommy’s got his six-string in park.” I enjoy Nena’s accent, but I wish she hadn’t listened when some moron told her to shave her armpits.
“The Mask” by Roger Glover (1984) – This is a well-produced record with intriguing lyrics about a woman who refuses to take off a tribal mask. Guess her face was too ugly, huh? The label thought they had a hit on their hands, so they had Glover do a video in which he handled a snake and let a tarantula walk on his head. I bet he was furious that the song flopped after he went through all of that.
“Everytime I See Your Picture” by Luba (1984) – The ‘80s was the decade of the power ballad, so it’s a mystery why this wasn’t bigger. Poor Luba was shut out of the entire Hot 100, and then Roxette went to #1 with a similar song a few years later.
“Gimme Gimme Gimme” by Narada Michael Walden with Patti Austin (1985) – This is an inoffensive little tune that squeaked into the top 40 on the R&B chart and should have done at least as well on pop radio. It has a somewhat humorous video in which Narada tries to steal a tough guy’s girlfriend at a drive-in movie theater. Too bad they didn’t let his duet partner Patti co-star in it, but she was already 35 years old so I guess it wasn’t believable that men would fight over her.
“The Riddle” by Nik Kershaw (1985) – Here’s someone who was really popular in Europe and deserved to do better in the States. “The Riddle” is a set of enticingly mysterious lyrics that invite people to ponder their meaning. Kershaw eventually revealed that they were “nonsense, rubbish, bollocks, the confused ramblings of an ‘80s popstar.”
MEMORABLE LYRICS
Here are a few Bubbling Under songs that didn’t quite earn a spot in my MP3 playlist, but which had great lyrics that deserve a mention. No commentary necessary.
“Take Me as I Am” by Carly Simon (1980)
But I wish you could have seen her
Drunk and high and with the gutter in her face
“You’re My Bestest Friend” by Mac Davis (1981)
And who discreetly whispers I forgot to zip my pants?
You babe, you’re my bestest friend
“Nipple to the Bottle” by Grace Jones (1982)
From the nipple to the bottle now the cow must die
AND NOW THE WORST...
This is what most of you are waiting for, a list of the worst Bubbling Under songs of the 1980s. Here are my picks:
“This Is My Country, Thank You Canada” by Shelley Looney (1980) – An 8-year-old Michigan girl wrote a thoughtful letter to Canada thanking them for rescuing some of the U.S. hostages from Iran. It wasn’t a terrible idea for her to read the letter on a spoken word record, but the cheap backing track makes it sound like the other awful jingoistic stuff that came out around that time. And if you think that she devoted her life to improving the U.S.-Canada relationship, you’d be mistaken. She instead became a very good hockey player who joined the USA Olympic team and won a gold medal in 1998. Guess which country she helped beat in the final game? No Tim Horton’s for you, Shelley.
“Givin’ It All” by Player (1980) – Player’s “Baby Come Back” was probably the most overplayed record of late 1970s top 40 radio. No one really needed the band to put out a less energetic version of what was almost the same song. They even replicated the scrotum-in-a-vise falsetto yelp before the third chorus.
“Bomb Iran” by Vince Vance & the Valiants (1980) – Bombing Iran was a perfectly fine sentiment given the behavior of “that man with the beard” (as Shelley Looney called the Ayatollah), but this Beach Boys parody contains a particularly offensive lyric: Went to a mosque / Gonna throw some rocks. That has not aged well.
“President’s Rap” by Rich Little (1982) – Speaking of not aging well, there’s this Reagan parody whose script is based mainly on pop culture ephemera like Mr. Bill and Fantasy Island. I hesitated to put it on the “worst” list, though, because Little does a good impression and I can see how some of the jokes might have been mildly amusing at the time. But then I listened to it again and remembered that the producer decided to loop “Genius of Love” in the background for 9 minutes straight. He also added a laugh track. Notice how Weird Al never has a laugh track on his songs, and yet they are way funnier than this.
“Dance Baby” by Alfonso Ribeiro (1984) – Alfonso’s Wikipedia article describes him as an actor, comedian, and television host. His brief teen singing career, such as it was, barely rates a mention. This awful record serves only as a backdrop for his prodigious dancing abilities. Click the link to see him hoofing it like a miniature Michael Jackson, surrounded by seven-foot-tall women in puffy pantaloons.
“One Bad Apple” by Nolan Thomas (1985) – Most people would have stopped listening to this record immediately upon recognizing it as an Osmonds remake. I foolishly persisted, but the high part of the chorus on this version really made me appreciate Donny’s talents by comparison. Then there’s a brief rap break that is just a pathetic attempt to say “Look what I did. I made this into an ‘80s song!” Little wonder that Billboard decided to discontinue the Bubbling Under chart shortly after this came along.
If you’d like a more thorough accounting of all of the Bubbling Under songs of the 1980s, check out the great Music in the Key of E blog.