Music / Wang Chung

L-R: Jack Hues, Nick Feldman.

"We were so in phase
In our dance hall days
We were cool on craze
When I, you, and everyone we knew
Could believe, do, and share in what was true"

— "Dance Hall Days"

Wang Chung is a British new wave band founded in London in 1980, originally comprised of Jack Hues, Nick Feldman, and Darren Costin. The band found their greatest success in the US, with five Top 40 hits there, all charting between 1983 and 1987, including "Dance Hall Days" (No. 16 in the summer of 1984), "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" (No. 2 in 1986) and "Let's Go!" (No. 9 in 1987).

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Discography:

• Huang Chung (1982)
• Points on the Curve (1984)
• To Live and Die in L.A. (soundtrack) (1985)
• Mosaic (1986)
• The Warmer Side of Cool (1989)
• Abducted by the 80's (EP; 2010)
• Tazer Up! (2012)
• Orchesography (2019)

Dance Hall Tropes:

• Bilingual Bonus: The band's name means "yellow bell" in Mandarin Chinese, which is also the first note in the Chinese classical music scale. Doubles as a Meaningful Name.
• City Shout Outs: In live shows of "Everybody Have Fun Tonight", they'll amend the song's opening line, "I'll drive a million miles to be with you tonight", to "I drove a million miles to be in [locale name] tonight".
• Jump Cut: Every frame of the music video for "Everybody Have Fun Tonight", directed by Godley & Creme, features a jump cut.
• Myspeld Rökband: The band's name was originally spelled "Huang Chung" as on their debut album, but it was later changed to Wang Chung at the recommendation of their label in order to make the pronunciation easier for English-speakers (and also supposedly because people kept calling them "Hung Chung").
• Pop-Star Composer: The band composed the soundtrack to William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A., while Jack Hues himself composed the soundtrack to Friedkin's later film The Guardian.
• Stage Names: Jack Hues was born as, and legally still is, Jeremy Allan Ryder.

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"Can you tell me what a Wang Chung is?"

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