Songoftheday 9/23/16 - Listen up everybody if you want to take a chance, just get on the floor and do the New Kids' dance...

"Hangin' Tough" - New Kids On The Block
from the album Hangin' Tough (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's song of the day comes from the Boston "boy-band" New Kids On The Block, whose second album Hangin' Tough had already sent three increasingly successful singles into the American pop charts with "Please Don't Go Girl", "You Got It (The Right Stuff)", and the #1 hit "I'll Be Loving You (Forever)". For the fourth release they put out the title track, written and produced by their svengali Maurice Starr. Heavy on percussion and attitude as light on lyrics, the thumping sing-a-long still made the girls (and some closeted boys) swoon...

"Hangin' Tough" became the quintet's second #1 pop hit in the U.S. in September of 1989. Internationally, the song also went to #1 in the UK (also their second #1 after "You Got It") and Ireland, top ten in Canada (#7), Australia (#8), Norway (#5), and New Zealand (#7), and #29 in Germany.

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And here's the boys actually in concert performing the song...

...and again in 1990 with Donnie Wahlberg trying to go all proto-Pink...

....finally the boys in 2013 still hangin', well, you know...

Up tomorrow: An ocularly-challenged Canadian seeks some heavenly organs.