Hang Me Up to Dry
2007 single by Cold War Kids
"Hang Me Up to Dry" is a song by American indie rock band Cold War Kids. Written and co-produced by all four band members and Matt Wignall, it originally came from their third EP Up in Rags (2006) and is the second track off their debut album Robbers & Cowards (2006). Lyrically, the song tells a story of a 'one-sided relationship' and uses the action of hanging wet clothes on a clothesline as a metaphor for the relationship.
It was released as a single on January 29, 2007 by Downtown and V2 Records, charting at number 57 in the UK and number 26 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart. The song was re-released (using the same catalogue number and track listing) on July 9, 2007 but failed to break back into the charts. An accompanying music video for the song was directed by The Malloys and plays out like a trailer for an avant-garde film.
Composition
According to the digital sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the song is set in 4/4 time with a tempo of 92 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of E minor with lead singer Nathan Willett's vocal range spanning from the low-note of E3 to the high-note of B4.
Music video
Directed by The Malloys, the video is styled after an avant-garde film trailer. Shot in black-and-white, the video features fictitious reviewer quotes and film festival nominations.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Hang Me Up to Dry” is 2007 single by Cold War Kids. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hang, single and Cold, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “2007 single by Cold War Kids” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3783023. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006 and 2007.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Hang Me Up to Dry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.