Dance Hall Days

Jack Hues of Wang Chung told Eric Greenberg on the Just My Show podcast: "It begins quite innocent: 'take your baby by the hand,' and then the last verse with 'take your baby by the wrist, and in her mouth an amethyst,' it's all a bit more hallucinogenic in a way, how things that start off simple get complex. My dad was a musician, and he had a band that played in an old-fashioned dance hall. I used to play with him in that band, so maybe there's sort of the nostalgia that's in the track. It's all quite real, actually, as far as experiences that I had when I was first starting out playing, and playing in public. Musically, it's that sort of rhythm and that kind of shuffly beat. Technically it's sort of like three against two [laughs], but we're not gonna talk about all that. It's a particular feel that was sort of unusual at the time, I suppose. It was partly inspired by one of the Adam and the Ants tracks, and that's part of the thinking of using Chris Hughes, who produced Adam's Kings of The Wild Frontier album. I think the record company were keen that we sort of met up with him, and Chris and I have been friends ever since that time - Chris works with me on my jazz records that I've made in the last couple of years. It's been one of the most important friendships of my life."

Even though they are British, this was Wang Chung's only hit in the UK. After it proved to be a bigger hit in the US and was featured in the film To Live And Die In LA, they decided to ignore the UK market and concentrate on the US. This proved an astute decision as they recorded two more American Top 10 hits, "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" (#2 in 1986) and "Let's Go!" (#9 in 1987), whilst not even recording a minor chart placing in the UK. Hues explained on Just My Show: "I think it has perhaps created a slight air of unreality around it. Because Wang Chung in Britain is sort of obscure '80s band. I think 'Dance Hall Days' was a fairly substantial hit over here, although it didn't chart high, it was in the charts for a long time. It took a long time going up, and a long time going down, like a proper record should do. And we did Top of the Pops a couple of times, which was a big BBC show where promising bands - or not so promising bands - got their exposure. But I think the divide between the US and the UK for me probably worked, in that I'm quite a private person, and at the time of 'Dance Hall Days' I had three children, and I wasn't married at the time, but my family life is very important to me. Being able to come home and be low key was great. I could leave all of the craziness behind in the States and just be myself, as it were, when I got back here."

This was one of the songs that was considered for Michael Jackson's Thriller album. Nick Feldman of Wang Chung told Songfacts: "Before 'Dance Hall Days' was definitively recorded by Wang Chung at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London, we had just demoed the song at a small, cheap North London studio. Through our publishers, a copy of the song fell into the hands of Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson, who loved it. Suddenly it was being considered for inclusion onto the forthcoming new Michael Jackson album, Thriller! That was an incredibly exciting prospect for an emerging yet-to-be-successful band like us. Some lyric changes were suggested, which we fooled around with, but in the end nothing quite stuck. And thanks to the lack of 'Dance Hall Days' on it, the Thriller album and Michael Jackson went on to fall into failure and obscurity. OK, maybe that didn't quite happen, but 'Dance Hall Days' became a huge hit for us instead and put us firmly on the pop music map in 1984."