“Take your baby by the hand….”
“Sophistipop” was a neat sub-genre of the New Romantic movement that came out of Britain in the 80s. Bands used the versatility of synths to provide jazz-style touches to the 4-4 beat of rock and roll, and the result was a pop song that made you feel like you were also seeing a cool lounge act. Martin Fry’s ABC was the first band to break the sound big time, and bands like Breathe, Double, and Johnny Hates Jazz followed.
When it came to pretension in pop music, you had to recognize the aspirations of Wang Chung. The band started as Huang Chung, which is a Mandarin phrase that roughly means “perfect pitch”. When their first album tanked, their record company convinced them to adopt the more accessible name “Wang Chung” and their next album, “Points On A Curve”, contained a single remixed from the first album. That single was “Dance Hall Days”.
Second time was the charm. The song doesn’t sound like anything else, really. It takes a bossa nova riff and surrounds it with shimmery synths and a detached gravelly vocal.
Lyrically, the song doesn’t make a lot of sense, as it matches a list of places you can “take your baby by” with a Dr. Seussian-style set of rhymes. (If you take your baby by the wrist, you can place in her mouth an amethyst, which seems like a bad idea in both seduction and jewellery appraisal). But so what? “Dance Hall Days” grabbed you as it came out of your radio. It SOUNDED classy, just the kind of thing teenagers wanting to be taken seriously would gravitate to. The classic video didn’t hurt. And you could dance to it, too.
This would be Wang Chung’s last European hit. Their next album, Mosaic, was more rock-oriented and was loved in North America and ignored in their native UK. They gave us the phrase “Everybody Wang Chung tonight” and a final hit called “Let’s Go”, whose chorus was “Let’s go, baby, let’s go, baby, come on”. This pretty much guaranteed that there will never be a game premised on the question “Whose lyric is it, Wang Chung or Leonard Cohen?” But if “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” is their best known hit, I will always remember “Dance Hall Days” as the band at their most interesting. Check it out here.
I always liked the shimmering effect of those chords playing throughout the song (sounds like a classic I-II-V or I-IV-V combo of chords) and the fun little sax riffs (unless that was actually synthesizer?)
Wow, I don't remember that video At All. The song was all over the radio though, you couldn't escape it.
I really miss sax in pop songs.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane!