The Canadian pop band Men Without Hats is most certainly best known for their iconic hit The Safety Dance, which became an international sensation in 1983, hitting the top 10 in twelve different countries around the globe. The video went into heavy rotation on MTV and is seared into the mind of any teenager of the time. The Safety Dance is such a goofy and idiosyncratic expression of Reagan era partying protest, that it is tempting to believe that the band just has to be a 1-hit wonder.
But they’re not.
Men Without Hats formed in 1977 Montreal, featuring brothers Ivan and Stefan Doroschuk and Jeremie Arrobas. Only vocalist Ivan remains to this day, and in the intervening years twenty-three other musicians have come and gone from the group.
Their name originated because the fashion-conscious brothers consistently braved the freezing temperatures of Quebec sans headwear.
Their best-known song had another inspiration which was also specific to the times. At the turn of the decade, the popularity of traditional disco music and dancing was beginning to wane, while the edgier and more modernist dance offshoot of the punk movement, called “New Wave” was gaining ground steadily. It was a change that some dance clubs were not prepared for. Punk and New Wave enthusiasts had a less formal and romantic approach to dancing than Disco fans had. One example was called “The Pogo.”
Take a minute or two and let Deborah Harry of Blondie explain the dance for you:
Okay, so you really only get a brief demonstration from Debbie, but I doubt many of you are complaining.
The Pogo was not done in pairs, and it really didn’t have any recognizable “moves.” You would just hop up and down and tip your head back and forth. Pogo dancers would bump into one another, but not in the aggressive way that you would see from slam dancing (later also called “moshing”). Dance club bouncers were not interested in discussing the various merits of new popular dance forms, however. Anything that smacked of punk and looked even a little dangerous was not particularly welcome in many mainstream dance clubs.
So when Ivan was kicked out of a club for pogoing, he went straight home and wrote The Safety Dance in protest. We can dance if we want to. Given this explanation, the seemingly odd lyrics fall into place, even the few descriptions of how the Pogo is done. For years the command that everybody should look at their hands kind of creeped me out. Why do I have to look at my hands at this exact moment? Are they covered in blood? Will I suddenly realize that I have cartoon hands with just three fingers and a thumb? What should I be looking for?
The song was a smash hit, but for a few years it seemed like Men Without Hats would not be able to take advantage of their new high-profile at all. The next year’s sequel album did not produce a single which hit even the top 100 in the U.S. Then their next recording was an EP instead of a full album and focused on multiple versions of a five-year old song, in a variety of languages. Pop fans around the globe never heard much from either of these records. As far as we were concerned in 1986, Men Without Hats had already been relegated to the league of 1-hit wonders. Yeah, those Safety Dance goofballs…whatever happened to them?
But then…
This happened. All of a sudden Men Without Hats was back on MTV. They were still kind of loopy, they were still fun, and gee whiz we could still dance to them. Pop Goes The World is a bouncy little pop song about the very American dream of pop stardom. There is absolutely nothing seedy or overtly disappointing about how the dream is presented. This is the heady and happy initial rush of the dream and we should all just put our brains away and wish along with Johnny and Jenny and the rest of their band “The Human Race.” Or is this a purposefully subtle dig at such unrealistic hopes of stardom? My primary thought is that it is catchy.
Pop Goes the World peaked at number 20 on the U.S. Billboard singles chart in December of 1987.
Unfortunately, Men Without Hats once again failed to follow success with success. Studio albums released in 1989 and 1991 did not make an impact, with ’91’s “Sideways” not even finding a distributor in the U.S. After former band member Allan McCarthy passed away, the group splintered, with singer Ivan releasing a solo record and his brother Stefan pairing with another musician for a different recording. The split was temporary, though, and the brothers released their 6th Men Without Hats album in 2003, called No Hats Beyond This Point.
A seventh album followed 9 years later in 2012 and Men Without Hats has since made the rounds of the 80s nostalgia circuit, touring alongside Howard Jones and Berlin just last year. They may never again delight a wide globe audience, but for anybody who grew up in the 80s, Men Without Hats will always fill that special goofy, catchy pop music spot in our brains.
More Nope, Not a One Hit Wonder
Interesting retrospective Daffy. I think Men Without Hats got caught between worlds like many of the early 80s dance bands. None of us coming of age in the late 70s knew yet there would be a dying off of creativity in favor of a new order of steel and glass. The early 80s seemed to be all about tunes you could jump around to while bridges were being built.
But this is from the perspective of someone older than the target audience of the time.
Well, 80s synthesizers certainly had a couple of sounds that reminded me of hammers hitting metal. I guess from my perspective bland disco and hippie retreads were so ubiquitous in the late 70s that when I finally found out about punk and new wave and they began to cross over into top 40 radio I was extremely relieved. Men Without Hats are definitely not at the top of my favorites list, but I see them as catchy harmless fun. By the end of the 80s pop radio had mostly fallen to dance acts like Madonna and hair metal like Bon… Read more »
Anyone notice one of the band mates looks like Denis Leary?
I guess he kind of does. That would certainly be considered a skeleton in Leary’s closet if it was him.
Not going to lie, when I saw the thumbnail for the Pop Goes the World video, I thought it was Denis Leary in a before they were stars moment. Then I saw the picture of the band.
Plus, if that was him, I think there are worse skeletons in his closet than this-after all, he was in the Ice Age christmas special and the awfully pretentious The Neon Bible.
I guess my thinking is that if you’re in a bad movie (especially when you’re doing voice-over work), you’re kind of a hired gun saying somebody else’s words as best you can. I mostly give actors a pass if they’ve got a couple of stinkers on their resume.
But if you’re a member of a band, well, that’s pretty much on you. It’s why bands with “artistic differences” like Styx break up all the time. It’s not a short job with a paycheck, it’s your thing.
Thanks for reading!
True, though, then again, I wasn’t implying I thought Denis was a member of the band-I kind of thought, if that was him, it would just be doing a gig acting in a video for someone’s band.
Also I too give actors a piss for having some stinkers on their resume-I was pretty much kidding when I said those two things were bigger skeletons in his closet.
Pop Goes The World brings back some memories. I remember hearing it a lot on the radio for the few months it was a hit in late ’87. I haven’t heard this song once since those days. Pop stands as the perfect example of a song that was briefly a hit single, then once it fades away it is just never ever heard from ever again. It’s a trip hearing the song again after so many years, that’s for sure.
and although it was pretty popular at the time,
1) I think there are a lot of people who would have forgotten about it and would on reflex identify Men Without Hats as a 1-hit wonder, and
2) as I mentioned in the article, before Pop Goes the World showed up, the assumption was that MwoH was in fact destined to be a 1-hit wonder
thanks for reading Craig!
Thanks so much Daffy! One of the best parts of this article was the explanation of “The Pogo” dance, and how dance clubs in the early 80’s had to deal with the decline of Disco (which honestly is probably why so many dance clubs sprang up in the 70’s anyway, especially after Saturday Night Fever, urm, fever), and the uprising of New Wave. I was always aware of the New Wave sound but wasn’t aware it actually sprang up from the Punk movement. How that whole monumental, overnight shift in music (keeping in mind just how HUGE Disco was in… Read more »
It was a little of both. I did my share of pogoing and slam dancing when I was a teen, but that all happened in the late 80’s. I did quite a lot of research on punk/New Wave about 5-10 years after it was current, which helped me understand and appreciate the 90s transition to ‘Alternative’ music. I was one of those dreary bookish boys who stayed up late for 120 Minutes, spent a lot of time in the stacks at the library pouring over bound back-issues of Rolling Stone and obsessed over the new Morrissey and Pixies records. I… Read more »