"Can you tell me what a Wang Chung is?"
Can't help you there, guy. 😕 I don't think that I was ever cool enough to know a Wang Chung (although it's supposed to mean "yellow bell"). Still, the theme song was fun.
During the annual major cleaning of the home before the end of 2021, we managed to unearth a big stack of dance remixes in a cardboard box, and lo and behold, one of those LPs happened to be British New Wave band Wang Chung's "Everybody Have Fun Tonight". Man, was that a party anthem for the 1980s! I first heard it on radio and heard it over and over again, thanks to those supremely catchy synth-horns and the repeated mantra of "Everybody have fun tonight, everybody Wang Chung tonight!". I mean, I knew about Jack Hues and Nick Feldman beforehand because of their "Dancehall Days" which was also a long stayer on the music video shows, but it was "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" that really got Wang Chung on the map.
Released as a single in September 1986, I used to listen to CHUM-AM's weekly singles countdown on Thursday nights, and I remember hoping that "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" would eventually hit the top spot, which it did, and it even reached No. 1 on Canada's RPM chart while it got to No. 2 on US Billboard's singles chart. But what also added to the song's fame was the music video which has probably ended up as one of the trippiest creations ever made with that jitter effect. Loved the video with all of the musicians cavorting about but I didn't dare watch it in a dark room.
Such was the popular party hearty nature of the song and those lyrics that it's become a long-standing pop culture gag on various shows and movies.
Just judging from some of the relatively few live performances that I've seen and their straight-faced expressions in the music video for "Everybody Have Fun Tonight", I'd long had an impression of Hues and Feldman being rather serious and unapproachable. Well, seeing this interview from a few years ago, I'm glad to see that they are actually quite nice and regular fellows.
And it was around 2019, some 33 years after "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" was first released that Wang Chung decided to have fun with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and make a new recording of the song...complete with jittery video again. I can only hope that someday that everybody will have fun every night again.
So, what were at No. 1, No. 3 and No. 5 on Oricon in September 1986?
No. 1 Akemi Ishii -- Cha-Cha-Cha
No. 3 Miho Nakayama -- Tsuiteru ne, Notteru ne（ツイてるねノッてるね）
No. 5 Momoko Kikuchi -- Say Yes!
Hello, Brian.
ReplyDeleteWang Chung has been called a one-hit wonder although I think it's more accurate to call them a 2-hit wonder (thanks to "Let's Go"), and fans also love "Dancehall Days" and "Hypnotize Me". I recall "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" also getting onto a beer commercial; good fit.
"Cha-Cha-Cha" was also a huge hit for Ishii. I think it may have been one of the first J-Eurobeat songs to get successful on the charts.
Even today that song never fails to liven up any ambience, it's aged remarkably well
ReplyDeleteHi, Ozzie. I'm betting once dance parties return from extinction, this song could be on the playlist. :)
DeleteMorning, Brian.
ReplyDeleteNo particular controversy here. I did say that "Cha-Cha-Cha" was one of the first successful J-Eurobeat. I've always used the expression "one of the first" since if I just used "the first", that could get me into some trouble and you did rightly say that "Dancing Hero" did come out last year. Unfortunately at my age, memory lapses aren't all that rare with me anymore. :)
Yeah, I think it all stems back to the postwar period when Japanese singers and producers were making cover versions of the hits in the United States and Great Britain at the time. And then in the decades to come, certain songwriters decided to not do exact covers but lift some of the catchier riffs of Western pop tunes to create original recordings. I remember that a couple of folks got singed for being a little too ambitious on that front by some of the original singers who didn't appreciate the sentiment.
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