(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover)
Sat 3 January 2026 13:30, UK
There’s a pretty good case to make for Men Without Hats’ 1982 single ‘The Safety Dance’ as the quintessential novelty pop hit of the 1980s; a decade rife with heavyweight competition in that category.
Hitting the important trifecta of MTV-era weirdness – nonsensical band name, nonsensical lyrics, and nonsensical Renaissance fair music video – ’The Safety Dance’ left a big enough impression that it also managed to outlast a lot of its original chart rivals as a cultural touchstone.
Not many songs have received a prominent needle-drop or punchline on The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, Futurama, AND Beavis and Butthead, but this truly was the special tune that united the entire animation community.
It’s also a great favourite of wedding DJs, as that singular synth groove and legendary opening verse have been getting butts on the dance floor for several generations now.
“We can dance if we want to / We can leave your friends behind / ‘Cause your friends don’t dance / And if they don’t dance / Well they’re no friends of mine.”
Men Without Hats arguably avoided the “one-hit wonder” tag when their 1987 single ‘Pop Goes the World’ reached number 20 in the US. They’ve also enjoyed quite a few other charting hits in their native Canada. For the most part, though, people have been asking frontman Ivan Doroschuk the same two questions for 40-odd years.
Firstly, “Do you ever wear a hat?” And secondly, “What was ‘The Safety Dance’ about?”
Men Without Hats in the 1980s. (Credits: Far Out / Men Without Hats)
Back in 1983, Doroschuk was sometimes a bit shy about expounding on the subject. In fact, he wasn’t all that keen on doing any of the usual promotion expected of a new ‘80s “it” band.
“I feel today too much mystery has been taken out of things,” he told the Detroit Free Press during the height of the ‘The Safety Dance’ phenomenon. “I’d like to think I’m putting some of the mystery back into it . . . We’re not interested in doing glossy pictures, Sixteen magazine, all the trade press. . . . We just want to take it one at a time, let ‘Safety Dance’ propel us and not jump into anything we’re not ready for.”
Over time, though, as theories about the song’s meaning got increasingly complex – was it about safe sex, or the Cold War, or some other ‘80s hot topic? – Doroschuk was compelled to spill the beans on the true origin of the anthem.
“The song was really written about me after I got kicked out of a bar in Ottawa,” Doroschuk told the Toronto radio station Boom 97.3 many years later. “I got kicked out for pogoing to The B-52s, I think— ‘Rock Lobster.’ It was the dying days of disco. I got kicked out of the bar and went home and wrote this. I think it’s a message that kids still want to hear today: yeah, it is safe to dance.”
Yes, rather than being a sort of satirical warning about restricting one’s movements to reduce injury risks, ‘The Safety Dance’ was really about freedom of expression, and feeling safe dancing however you please. It’s a message that obviously isn’t constrained by any 1980s political context, and thus, the song has remained the centrepiece of Men Without Hats’ live shows to this day.
“It’s almost like it doesn’t belong to me anymore,” Doroschuk told the Calgary Herald in 2024. “It belongs to everybody, and I’m this musical museum curator that goes around presenting this artefact that brings a lot of joy to people.”
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