The Safety Dance

Though music fans have often interpreted the song as a metaphor for nuclear war or a call for safe sex, Men Without Hats guitarist Stefan Doroschuk said in an online interview that "The Safety Dance" is about nonconformism and everyone's ability to leave their friends behind and strike out on their own. His brother Ivan, who was Men Without Hats' lead singer, claimed on VH1's show True Spin that the specific inspiration was bouncers hassling people in bars who would "pogo" dance to the new wave songs of the early '80s. Said Ivan: "I was telling people it's OK, you can slam dance if you want to." Ivan explained that he considered Men Without Hats a punk band, and they were very antiauthority.

The music video looks like an awesome renaissance faire, with lead singer Ivan Doroshuck traveling around a village orchestrating a Morris Dance, which is a kind of English folk dance. Directed by Tim Pope, it was shot at a village in Wiltshire, England. MTV had been on the air for about two years when they started playing the video in 1983. They were on their way to becoming an irreverent voice of youth culture, playing lots of videos by superstars (Michael Jackson, The Police), but also introducing some wacky lesser-known (usually foreign) artists with bonkers videos. This fit the later category quite well.

Ivan Doroschuk told the radio station Boom 97.3 in Toronto: "The song was really written about me after I got kicked out of a bar in Ottawa. 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."