Song: “The Safety Dance”
Canadian musicians, an editor from the UK, and a dance mix hit
Another great Canadian export, Men Without Hats featured three brothers (Stefan, Colin, and Ivan Doroshuck) from Montreal. The group considered themselves a punk band and were strongly anti-authority, but this song moved them into the New Wave category, where they have stayed.
“The Safety Dance” was interpreted by some as anti-nuclear war or a call for safe sex — it was 1982, the height of the Cold War and the early days of the AIDS epidemic, after all. But lead singer Ivan Doroshuck said he wrote the song after being kicked out of a club for “pogo” or slam dancing, leading to the line, “You can dance if you want to.”
The song is remarkable in one way — it only became a hit thanks to a longer dance remix, which went to #1 on the Dance chart, leading the way for the shorter single to reach #3 on the Hot 100.
In the video, performers can be seen repeatedly forming an “S” by jerking one arm in an upward curve and the other in a downward curve.
The identity of the blonde “Jenny” dancing in the video wasn’t known until 2013, when she was identified as Louise Court, a journalist who was editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan in the UK, and later a director at Hearst Magazines UK.
The actor Mike Edmonds plays the little person in the video. Edmonds has appeared in several films including Return of the Jedi, Time Bandits, Dark Crystal, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Enjoy!