Bubbling Under: Pat Wilson- "Bop Girl" and Commuter- "Young Hearts"

This week: Two artists with film connections who only had a handful of songs each.

Welcome to Bubbling Under. Each edition I cover an artist who charted outside Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. This week I cover two artists: Australian pop singer Pat Wilson and the band Commuter.

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When I started writing this piece around June, I’d intended it to be about three artists who each featured on a 1980s film soundtrack. However, it later turned into a seperate piece on Gary Myrick, slated for December. I didn’t want to delete what I’d written on Commuter and it just sat in my drafts folder for ages. A few months later I remembered that Pat Wilson’s “Bop Girl” also peaked on the Bubbling Under charts. “Bop Girl” is only really remembered nowadays for it’s video which featured a future A-List film actress. While the song wasn’t featured in a film at the time (to my knowledge), it’s a loose enough connection.

There’s not a ton of info on Pat Wilson. She was born Patricia Higgins On June 11, 1948 in Australia. Most info on her starts with her meeting musician Ross Wilson at some point in the mid-1960’s. After a move to the UK and back, they got married, and Ross joined the popular Australian band Daddy Cool.

The band had a huge Australian hit in 1971 with their debut single “Eagle Rock”. I’d only really known the track via a mention on Wikipedia years ago about a “dance” that a bunch of presumably drunk men came up with at some point. To quote the article directly:

“Whenever the song is played at an event or a public bar, they (particularly the males) congregate on the dance floor where they unstrap their belts and hobble around singing the song with their trousers around their ankles”.

Weird. I decided to look this up to see if it’s true and not someone trolling the internet. Lo and behold, according to several articles and Ross Wilson himself it’s true.

Anyway, here’s a clip of the song itself. Supposedly that’s Pat in the audience around the 1:40 mark.

The band’s fame carried over to Pat as well and she wrote a column for the Australian magazine Go-Set as “Mummy Cool”.

Eventually in 1983, with Ross at the helm, Pat Wilson embarked on a brief musical career of her own. The result was “Bop Girl”.

The A-List actress I mentioned who appeared in the “Bop Girl” video was Nicole Kidman. Apparently, Kidman has no regrets over being in the video and has insisted it be used in career retrospectives.

The song itself is really fun. It has a persistent 80’s beat similar to “Material Girl”. I recall an article no longer online that wondered if Madge herself had heard this. I am inclined to wonder the same thing. It has the same sing-along factor, a similar beat albeit slowed down, and in a better world, “Bop Girl” would have been just as big a hit. Coincidentally, Wilson also wore a wedding dress in the “Bop Girl” video about a year before Madonna did the same for “Like A Virgin”.

I snagged a file of “Bop Girl” once during the good old MP3 blog days and played it constantly. Why I passed on this upon seeing it on vinyl is one of life’s great mysteries. Here’s another clip of Wilson performing the track on Australian TV’s Countdown, a sort of American Bandstand/Top Of The Pops:

Here’s a third (extremely cringeworthy) clip of her performing the song from Countdown’s Holiday special with a bunch of kids and a dancing Santa Claus:

Holy 1983, Batman! Anyway, Wilson did follow this single up with an EP and a second Australian hit “Strong Love”, a duet with Ross. Seemingly stuck in her husband’s shadow, the 45 sleeve unfortunately bills her as “Pat Wilson And Her Daddy”.

Because music videos were a big thing in Australia before the rest of the world, likely because of geographical differences, “Strong Love” also got the video treatment:

It’s also a fun song despite not being as strong as “Bop Girl”. I found the video cheesy and not as appealing aesthetically as the one for “Bop Girl”. While it’s a shame Wilson’s music didn’t catch on more, other singers like Josie Cotton, Tracey Ullman, and Mari Wilson were doing a similar retro kitsch brand of pop at the same time and Pat fell into the cracks as a result.

There’s not a lot more in the information department on Pat aside from that. She divorced Ross Wilson around 1989 and appears to have gone low profile since then.

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Taken from the soundtrack to 1984’s The Karate Kid, “Young Hearts” is a synth-driven new wave rocker. It’s hands down one of the highlights of the soundtrack and was rightfully chosen as a single. It deserved to go higher than #101, but then I wouldn’t have gotten to cover it here. The song seems to be popular with fans of 80’s music and the Karate Kid franchise with one person even asking on Reddit why there isn’t more info on Commuter.

There’s also no info on band members aside from Discogs listing a musician named Dave Merenda.

“Young Hearts” was one of those 80’s soundtrack singles where the B-Side was by another artist. In this case, “No Shelter” by 80’s alternative band Broken Edge.

Broken Edge are another mystery band, but they did at least record one album on Polydor, 1984’s Time For A Change. The title track also served as their second single.

As for Commuter, Discogs lists a 2009 album credited to Merenda and Commuter which features more songs as well as a live version of “Young Hearts” and the original single version. These tracks sound like they were recorded in the 80s, which leads me to suspect this is an album for Casablanca that didn’t pan out. “Young Hearts” was a really solid single. I don’t know why it didn’t chart, but maybe the album was shelved after the single underperformed. Who knows.

Thankfully, this album is on Spotify, so here is Commuter with “Lonely Is The Heart”

Merenda had one more credit and much to my surprise, it’s involving Canadian artist. He was a credited co-writer on the Sarah McLachlan hit “I Will Remember You”. I don’t like that song, so I’ll spare you having to hear it.

He also has a website which can be found here.

Next Week: TBA