Thursday 14 May 2020
and we can dress real neat from our heads to our feet
Reaching its apex on this day in the Canadian Singles Survey (these charts give me great joy) in 1983, Men Without Hats’ hit The Safety Dance was inspired after band leader Ivan Doroschuk was tossed out of a night club by bouncers for pogoing on the dance floor during the transition from the slow death of disco to new wave in the early 1980s, despite the efforts of some to read more meaning into the song, interpreting it as an appeal to practise safe sex or protest nuclear armament though those are noble take-aways. The music video, directed by Tim Pope was filmed in the village of West Kington in Wiltshire, features several superannuated styles of dancing including mummers and maying.