"Hanging on a Heart Attack" is a song by American pop rock band Device, released in 1986 as the lead single from their only studio album 22B3.

[4][5] Upon its release, Cash Box praised Knight as a "songwriter par excellence" and considered "Hanging on a Heart Attack" to be a "tough and eery rocker that has immediate appeal".

[6] Nancy Erlich of Billboard noted that the song's "heavy duty dance beat and snippets of weirdness should please both mainstream and alternative rock crowds".

Straddling the line between Album Radio and Top Forty, a record like [this] pretty much defines the 80s modus operandi of airplay rock.

"[8] Pan-European magazine Music & Media picked the song as one of their "sure hits" in their issue of 16 August 1986 and noted its "melodic and powerful pop chording".