The Safety Dance Was Stranger Than I Thought

For years I thought Men Without Hats had exactly one song. Turns out the band behind The Safety Dance had a whole catalog—and filmed their most famous video in one of the oldest ritual landscapes in Europe.

TL;DR:

I thought Men Without Hats were a one-hit novelty band. Turns out they had multiple albums, came out of bilingual Montreal, and filmed The Safety Dance at a 4,500-year-old stone circle in England. Which somehow makes the song even weirder.

It also seems like the song was inspired by the lead singer being kicked out of Montreal nightclubs repeatedly for pogoing at events.

I had no idea where they were from. Canada continues to surprise me like that.

There was a story behind the music.

There also seems to be an "“official” site that only plays the video below and lets you share it. If you leave it on, it just plays in a loop.

So now we know that.

Safety Dance — Men Without Hats

But they weren’t just a novelty single. They released multiple albums in that stretch — including Rhythm of Youth (1982), Folk of the 80’s (Part III, no idea why III) (1984), and Pop Goes the World (1987). They had a catalog.

French (missed) connection

They were also based in Montreal, so lead singer Ivan Doroschuk grew up in a bilingual city, but the band recorded entirely in English. No French version of “Safety Dance,” sadly.

No francophone catalog. Just English-language synth pop coming out of Quebec at a moment when language politics were at extremes.

That choice feels deliberate in hindsight. Or at least directional.

For a band I once mentally filed under “one-hit wonder,” it was a bit more layered than I realized.

specious connections

I was going to post this one when we were traveling around this part of the UK last summer, but it didn’t make the cut.

The connection seemed thin and, TBH, there are better songs to put forward.

The video for The Safety Dance was filmed in West Kington, in Wiltshire, England, in the general area of Avebury Stone Circle, which we went to — one of the largest Neolithic stone circles in Europe.

I was in Avebury last year. You can walk right up to the stones. No ropes. No dramatic lighting. Just sheep, wind, and these massive slabs rising out of the grass like they’ve always been there and always will be.

Unlike all of the cordoned off sections of Stone Henge, this henge you can walk right up to, a few of the stones seem to be driving hazards and there are stores and a pub within the circle.