robbed hit of the week 7/28/14 - Wang Chung's "To Live And Die In L.A."...

Wang Chung - "To Live And Die In L.A."
from the album To Live And Die In L.A. (Original Soundtrack) (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #41

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the British new wave band Wang Chung, who scored two top-40 hits from their breakthrough album Points On A Curve with "Don't Let Go" and the top-20 "Dance Hall Days". For their next project they were recruited by director William Friedkin to record the entire soundtrack for the political/crime intrigue movie To Live And Die In L.A., starring future CSI star William Petersen and Willem Dafoe. The title track from the movie, written by band members Nick Feldman and Jack Hues, became the first single from the effort...

While the single climbed to #21 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, it stopped one notch short of the top-40 at #41 for two weeks in December of 1985, spending over four months on the chart. It remains my favorite song from the band, and the moody, atmospheric soundtrack remains a personal treasure.

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Here's the band live performing the song in the 80s...

...and in a recent set from 2010...