Though it may seem quaint now that we exist in an era where it’s widely understood that bands and performers toiling on the lower rungs of the fame ladder should exploit every revenue possibility that comes their way, there was a time when it was surprising to hear a song from a favored artist at our station used in a more commercial venture. Now actual commercials didn’t happen too often, but John Hughes had spent much of the nineteen-eighties teaching his fellow filmmakers to look to the left end of the radio dial to find low-cost options to fill out movie soundtracks. If the days of the blockbuster soundtrack were fading by the late-eighties, there was still an entertainment industry compulsion to make sure there were companion purchases readily available for each and every new release. Since Kenny Loggins couldn’t write everything, all those albums needed tracks from someone. And Paul Kelly was one of the least likely people to be snatched up for one of those albums.

To be fair, Kelly’s music wasn’t exactly getting collected for the expected blockbusters of the day. Still, one of his most notable songs, “Dumb Things,” managed to find its way into one of the biggest hits of 1989. No one really expected Look Who’s Talking to be a big deal at the box office, considering it featured TV star Kirstie Alley, a washed up John Travolta, and the voice of a slumming Bruce Willis as little baby Mikey (no matter how unauspicious the gig may seem for Willis, I maintain that “Hey, it’s the bear show!” remains the finest line reading he’s ever delivered). And right in the heart of the film, there’s Kelly’s jaunty single, providing appropriately peppy musical accompaniment even if the lyrics were fairly incongruous with what was happening onscreen. Here was a song from an album that practically no one in America owned–though they damn well should have–and countless people were getting exposed to it thanks to director Amy Heckerling.

“Dumb Things” wound up in least one other film, gracing one of the vinyl sides to the soundtrack for Young Einstein, the film that was supposedly going to make Yahoo Serious the next Australian import to win over American moviegoers just the same way Paul Hogan did a few years earlier with Crocodile Dundee (now almost completely erased from the culture, it’s amazing just how popular that damn movie was). Needless to say, Kelly’s stateside popularity didn’t get much of a boost from that particular offering.

Listen or download –> Paul Kelly and the Messengers, “Dumb Things”

(Disclaimer: “Dumb Things” is surely Kelly’s best-known song, at least outside of his Australian homeland. So it’s possible it’s landed on some sort of compilation that’s still available for purchase as a physical item. As far as I can tell, though, the Kelly catalog is a ghostly memory within our borders. Thusly, this song is shared with the expectation and understanding that it cannot be purchased from your favorite local, independently-owned record store in a way that duly compensates the artist and the proprietor of said store. That typed, I will gladly remove it from this humble corner of the internet if asked to do so by anyone with due authority to make such a request.)