Songfacts®:

• "When Things Go Wrong" is the most enduring song from Robin Lane & the Chartbusters, largely by virtue of its video being the eleventh music video ever shown on MTV. Robin Lane's career started when she sang on Neil Young's "Round And Round (It Won't Be Long)." She and the Chartbusters had two studio and one live album released under Warner Bros. from 1980–81.
  
  The band was almost universally lauded. Lane's voice and tight songwriting were top notch, and most people in the music press thought the Chartbusters would be successful, but the closest they got to busting the charts was with this song at #87. As with many talented bands, that never quite panned out, and the band broke up officially in 1983. They got together a few times in the years since, but it was for one-off reunion shows the like.
• The song is about a loving relationship that has grown cold. In the tough times, the guy grows distant, and the girl grows frustrated.
  
  In a Songfacts interview with Robin Lane, she had little to say about it, offering only that she doesn't like the chorus. "It annoys me."
• Robin Lane wrote this song with Joanne Cipolla, who was a member of the group Planet Street.
• "When Things Go Wrong" grew out of an earlier Lane song titled "Never Enough." That song was covered by the Pousette-Dart Band on their 1979 album of the same name.