“Shut Up and Dance”
27 Weeks On Hot Rock Songs
When Walk the Moon’s snappy new-wave throwback “Shut Up and Dance” reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, it marked the rare instance of an alternative rock band successfully crossing over to the pop charts. The Cincinnati four-piece — singer Nicholas Petricca, 28; guitarist Eli Maiman, 29; bassist Kevin Ray, 29; and drummer Sean Waugaman, 28 — had an inkling that the boy-meets-girl tune, released two months ahead of the band’s second album for RCA Records, Talking Is Hard, was “special”; 27 weeks atop the Hot Rock Songs chart proved it.
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RAY The first time we played “Shut Up and Dance” live, the audience started singing along by the second chorus.
TOM CORSON, president/COO, RCA Records: The song is super catchy and the lyrics are fun, which can be a good thing and a challenge. We figured that it would take a minute.
MICHAEL McDONALD, Mick Management: The goal is always to cross to pop, but not everyone gets there. This is textbook artist development — the band spent six years building on the live front and taking songs to radio. When they hit, it wasn’t their first time at the radio station.
RAY Now that it’s a “record-breaking record,” you realize the power of a song like that. It’s almost addictive. You want to do it again.
This story originally appeared in the Dec. 19 issue of Billboard.