“My Hang-Up is You”
Freddie Hart
Written by Freddie Hart
Billboard
#1 (6 weeks)
March 11 – April 15, 1972
We’ve talked a lot in this decade so far about classic hits that have endured over the decades.
But did you notice that those classic hits often spent less time at the top than other chart toppers that have been lost to the sands of time?
Good luck even finding “My Hang-Up is You” to stream. I was at least able to find a YouTube rip.
But this is no glorious rediscovery of a lost classic. “My Hang-Up is You” lays bare the shortcomings that “Easy Loving” papered over. Hart isn’t in the same league as his younger contemporaries as a vocalist, and the production is stuck hopelessly in the sixties. There were moments that I did a double take because I thought I was listening to “It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin’.”
I love that Hart had a few more big hits after “Easy Loving.” But this record just isn’t up to the standard of its predecessor or most of the other songs reaching the top during this era. I can’t believe it stayed there for so long.
“My Hang-Up is You” gets a C.
Every No. 1 Single of the Seventies
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I actually like this. I would give it a “B-“. It is trying way too hard to sound like “Easy Lovin'” and that is the biggest problem. You can’t duplicate magic. Most singers do this to some extent and it seldom works. Good song but forgettable also.
I think “My Hang Up Is You” is a good song, but I also agree that it is also a bit too much of a carbon copy of its predecessor. And as for its production still stuck in the 1960’s–well, I think that could be said of a lot of Nashville-based records of the time, what with the Nashville Sound of the previous decade having morphed into Countrypolitan, and with the outlaws and the West Coast hippies only just then starting to make themselves heard.
Even so, I’d take this over the dumpster fire that was the Bro-Country movement any day of the week, and twice on Sundays (LOL).
I’m so glad it didn’t get a good score or I would’ve had a hek of a time trying to find a CD that had this song on it lol. I like “Easy Lovin” but I don’t know. Maybe need to dig into his material to get better acquainted. “Key’s In the Mailbox” is great though!
So this was the “Take Me There” of the 70s. A song that spent forever at the top but left no impact.
Maybe I am simply too much of a Freddie Hart fan having discovered the terrific records he recorded for KAPP during the 1960s, but I liked this single and would give it a “B”. I agree that the song is too derivative of “Easy Lovin'” but Freddie was a very distinctive vocalist, and I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt on his recordings. This song remained in heavy rotation for the first few years after it hit.