The Number Fortys: Wang Chung - "Don't Let Go"

In The Number Fortys, we review every song that was sitting at #40 on the Billboard chats, starting in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either).

Wang Chung had a love of hexagon-shaped drums and UK art rock.  Unfortunately, they're best known for "Everybody Have Fun Tonight," as featured in endless Vh1 specials from our youth, but they had a couple of great moments as a pop group. "Hypnotize Me" for example has a swoon-worthy chorus that is like some combination of candy and angels; it's a 7.

This one is not one of those moments. 

Serious kudos or whatever to the Wang Chung dudes jumping in the recording studio like they're playing Wembley Stadium or something. For all you aspiring musicians out there, it's not a good idea to do this in an actual recording session. Anyway, "Don't Let Go" is histrionic nonsense that sounds more like an action movie soundtrack than an actual song. Interestingly, Wang Chung did the soundtrack for the following year's William Friedkin film, To Live and Die in L.A; the title song's a 7, the film's a 7 too. But getting back to the song. Actually, let's not get back to the song. Let's notice how much the singer looks like a balding, less physically fit Sting, aside from the neckerchief, or is it a scarf? The singer has a name by the way, because he is a person, and persons are given names when they are born. It's just how we do things. His real name is Jeremy Ryder, but he changed it when he became a musician to...are you ready?...Jack Hues.

Isn't that fucking great. Jeremy Ryder? Nah, not rock and roll enough. I'm going to change it to Jack Hues. I fucking love english people. Maybe it was an ironic gesture at all the punk stage-naming that was going on around that time. Oh, you're gonna call yourself Sid Vicious, well I'm going to be...Jack Hughes. Anyway, Jack studied music at Goldsmith's College, and went on to something called the Royal College of Music, where--for this song at least--he appears to have studied bullshit. This song gets a 2.

THE NUMBER ONE

So there's this Danny Boyle movie coming out this summer about this guy who gets hit by a bus and---actually, I'm not sure how it works, but the premise is what if the rest of the world had never heard the Beatles, but one person knew all the songs and so he could play all these great songs and people would think he wrote them (or something). The whole think reeks of boomer-centric nonsense, if you ask me. And now that I'm thinking about it, it'd be a way more interesting movie to do the same thing, except for Van Halen, and except for the guy gets locked up and goes to jail. This song is still, and will always be, a 10.