In the early days of Popservations, I’d occasionally flip the script, as the kids say, for Friday Flashback. Instead of feting a forgotten favorite, I’d trot out a musical skeleton stashed deep within my closet. We’ve all got them: songs we once loved, but now laughably devoid of any redeeming value. Not even good enough to be branded guilty pleasures, these ditties are downright embarrassing in retrospect. If we could backtrack and do things differently, wouldn’t we?

It’s been nearly three years since I put one of these musical embarrassments on public display, but nothing came to mind during that time that fit the category. Maybe it was a mental block for self-preservation, but I mistakenly thought I might have exhausted the idea until a few days ago, when out of nowhere, Michael Bolton’s “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” began playing in my head. Like a “bolt from the blew,” as it were.

Yes, I confess there was a time I loved the tenderness of a Michael Bolton tune. So enraptured with “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” was I that I even bought the CD single (later sacrificed during an occasional culling of my music collection). In my defense, the only one I can muster, the song was co-written and produced by Robert John “Mutt” Lange, a master of pop production and hookmeister extraordinaire (see: Def Leppard, The Cars, Shania Twain).

This very week in January 1994, Michael Bolton peaked at #6 with “Said I Loved You…But I Lied.” Good to know that I wasn’t the only one in denial eighteen years ago.

The music video for “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” is, as you might imagine considering its mid-’90s origins, a ridiculously over-the-top affair — fire, running horses, horses running through the fire — even an eagle! Today the clip, filmed in the Arizona desert, plays like a parody of itself, though I doubt anyone involved at the time of its making was that self-aware.

Michael Bolton – “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.