Songfacts®:

• Device (not to be confused with the metal band active from 2012–2014) was led by keyboard player Holly Knight, who wrote their songs with producer Mike Chapman. Knight and Chapman were reliable hitmakers: They collaborated to write Tina Turner's hit "Better Be Good To Me" and Pat Benatar's "Love Is A Battlefield." So when Device released their first single, "Hanging On A Heart Attack," it seemed like sure thing, but the song stalled at #35 in the US despite a slick video and plenty of promotional appearances, including a performance on American Bandstand.
  
  "There were a lot of amazing things about the band," Knight told Songfacts. "We were very sophisticated musically."
  
  Knight got on well with their guitarist, Gene Black, but never clicked with their lead singer, Paul Engemann. "I'm from New York, and he was from Utah and came from a family of Mormons," she said. "He was just not the singer that I was looking for."
• Device's next single, "Who Says," charted at #79 and the band broke up after just one album. "Hanging On A Heart Attack" was rarely heard until the streaming era, when it found new life. The song earned over 500,000 views on YouTube and close to a million streams on Spotify.
• This song is about redlining, reaching the point where you feel you're right on the edge. The heart condition metaphor is one Holly Knight deployed on another song she wrote: "My Heart is Failing Me" by Riff. She also wrote songs called "Hide Your Heart," "Heart Don't Fail Me Now" and "Fall Apart Golden Heart" (she even wrote with the band Heart!). "Maybe I should have been a cardiologist," she said.
• The music video is quite a production, with futuristic costumes, lots of smoke, and a character the looks like a deranged mime. It was directed by Brian Grant, one of the most prolific music video makers of the era. His work includes "Stand Back" for Stevie Nicks and "How Will I Know" for Whitney Houston.
• While Device never had a big hit, one of the songs Holly Knight and Gene Black worked on for the group did. That song, "Never," ended up going to the band Heart and went to #4.