Whatever it means, there will be a lot of wang chunging on Sunday, June 9.

“There’s kind a mystery to that, to what that means,” Wang Chung’s Nick Feldman said in a Zoom call with Whatzup. “We quite like that. It’s actually a Chinese musical term, but it also sounds like the sound of the guitar: You know, ‘Wang Chung!’ I think a bit like our music, you can take it on its surface in that accessible, fun side, but then, if you want to drill a bit down, there’s quite a lot going on.”

The infectious phrase, “Everybody wang chung tonight” is, of course, from Wang Chung’s mammoth 1986 hit “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.” You’ll hear that and more when Wang Chung, Men Without Hats, and Naked Eyes stop by The Clyde Theatre on June 9 during the Abducted by the 80’s tour stop.

“We don’t quite know what it means, but it sort of sounds good, and it sounded like a good name for an ’80s-oriented concert,” Feldman said of the tour title, which is also the name of one of their EPs. “Having been on the road again in recent years, you bump into people and get friendly with various bands from the era that you played. We just felt we could put together an interesting tour with a good blend of bands that could work really well together.”

What’s in a name?

Long before embarking on a nostalgic tour, bassist/guitarist/keyboardist Feldman, vocalist/guitarist Jack Hues, and drummer Darren Costin formed Huang Chung. 

The trio recorded a number of singles before releasing their self-titled debut album in 1982 with Arista Records. The album was followed by the release of the single “Dance Hall Days,” but they were then released by Arista and became the first U.K. band signed to Geffen Records.

It was at this time the band began contemplating a name change.

“We were just so sick of no one being able to pronounce our name,” Feldman said of Huang Chung, which is the tone of absolute pitch in ancient Chinese music. “Most people called us ‘Hung Chung.’ We just got fed up with it, so we wanted to change it to something completely different, but David Geffen was like, ‘No, it’s great. Don’t do that. Just change it to a ‘W.’ ”

With the updated name, the group hit the studio to record Points on the Curve. Due to Arista not imposing a re-recording restriction on “Dance Hall Days,” Wang Chung used it on the album, and it became their first big hit, reaching No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

A sound that tracks

Along with “Dance Hall Days,” the single “Don’t Let Go” also charted off Points on the Curve, but it was another song off the album that led to their next album.

“Wait” had caught the ear of famed director William Friedkin, who was in the process of making To Live and Die in L.A.

“He loved Points on the Curve and particularly loved a song called ‘Wait,’ which is very fast, very atmospheric,” Feldman said. “He had been using that track as a sort of temp track in some of the scenes in the movie. Then he thought, ‘Why don’t I just approach them and see if they’ll actually do something specific for the movie?’ 

“He rang Jack up and told him what he wanted from us. We all spoke and he said, ‘Just be spontaneous. Send me 45 minutes of music and I’ll let you know what I think.’ We did that and he absolutely loved it. He actually cut quite a lot of the movie to the music, which is very unusual.”

With Costin having moved on, the request from Friedkin came at a good time for Feldman and Hues.

“When ‘Dance Hall Days’ off the Points on the Curve album came out, we had our first massive hit with that and ‘Don’t Let Go,’ ” Feldman said. “Then, of course, we had all that record company pressure of, ‘Where’s the follow-up?’ 

“We were in the studio and finding it very hard to come up with it. We thought we had a few contenders, but they were like, ‘No. That’s not a hit.’ That’s when we got approached by William Friedkin the film director of The Exorcist and The French Connection. He was like, ‘I want you to do the instrumental soundtrack to the whole movie To Live and Die in L.A., and I don’t want songs. I want it gritty and instrumental and dark.’ Literally, the opposite of what the record company wanted. They wanted three-minute pop songs.

“Doing that was so refreshing for us. He loved what we did so much that it was very inspiring for us. I think that kind of cleansed our palette to get back on the horse of doing some kind of good pop music.”

Being spontaneous

With cleansed palettes, they indeed recorded some “good pop music” with 1986’s Mosaic, featuring top-10 hits “Let’s Go” and “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.”

While we all know “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” became a genre-defining hit, Hues and Feldman were not so sure at the time.

“To be honest, I think it was a bit of a surprise,” he said. “Normally, everything is very planned with us and we meticulously put our recordings together. But ‘Everyone Have Fun Tonight’ came together very spontaneously in the studio, which is very unlike how we normally work. It was to the point where we weren’t even sure if it was any good or not. We thought, ‘This is either terrible or it’s great. We don’t know which.’ 

“It’s only when our manager turned up and heard it. We were worried he was going to tell us we wasted a lot of studio time and we’re very naughty boys. But he came in and just freaked out. He loved it so much. We thought, ‘Thank God for that.’ ”

The song shot up to No. 2 on the chart and forged a chorus that resides in many a head.

“I think the amazing thing is it’s endured for so long,” Feldman said. “It’s become almost part of the language, the culture.”

And it did not take long for the two to discover how big the song had gotten.

“I remember once Jack and I got mobbed while we were in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,” Feldman said. “We had a few days off, and we love art. We were having a break, having been there a few hours and we were in canteen. Suddenly, we looked up and there was a queue of people wanting our autographs. We had to leave.”

Coming and going

Despite the success of Mosaic, Feldman and Hues followed their own interests following the release of 1989’s The Warmer Side of Cool. 

They returned for a promotional tour following the release of a greatest hits album in the late ’90s and Feldman became an A&R manager for Warner Music UK, then Sony Music UK at the turn of the century.

Hues and Feldman would get back together for shows from time to time and released a pair of EPs in 2010, including Abducted by the 80’s. In 2012, they released their first full-length album in 23 years with Tazer Up!

They’re now back with the Abducted by the 80’s tour to promote a musical era that is cemented in people’s minds while also attracting new fans.

“It’s amazing how it still resonates with people,” Feldman said of new wave. “Obviously, it goes back to people who were originally abducted by the ’80s, but it’s also younger people. I think it’s partly because the production value of those songs are still very much used and resonate with younger producers and bands. So, I think that sound is familiar to younger and older people. It just works well.”

Prior to Wang Chung taking the stage at The Clyde, Naked Eyes will get you moving with “Always Something There To Remind Me” and Men Without Hats will certainly get you on your feet with their hit song “Safety Dance.”

However, the bands will go deeper than the hits, which is what makes this tour unique.

“We wanted to be able to play a bit longer and play some deeper cuts as well — and the hits, of course,” Feldman said of the concert’s format. “We’ll be playing the hits.

“We love to put on a good show. We’re musically and artistically committed. We mean what we do. It’s important to us to be good. I don’t mean just showing up. We’re trying express something that means something to us. We don’t just want to phone it in, in other words.”