Men Without Hats: You Can (Still) Dance If You Want To

The 1980s were a landmark era in popular music. The rise of MTV brought a greater emphasis on fashion and visuals. Many artists – guided by their labels and/or management – were laser-focused on doing what it took to get noticed and be successful under this new paradigm. Others found their way into the spotlight almost without trying. Montreal, Quebec band Men Without Hats fell into the latter category.

Starting out in 1977 as a punk band, Men Without Hats – fronted by singer Ivan Doroschuk – shifted to a synthesizer-centric style modeled in part after the music of British artists like Gary Numan and Ultravox. When they released their debut album Rhythm of Youth just eight months after MTV premiered, they didn’t even have a U.S. distribution deal. A followup to their debut EP Folk of the 80’s, the album would make few ripples on the pop music landscape.

Undaunted, the group returned to the recording studio and began work on another record. “We were halfway through recording Folk of the 80’s (Part III),” recalls Doroschuk. “And we got a call from our record label: ‘Everybody’s doing dance club remixes. You have to make 12” remix of “The Safety Dance.”’”

Dance remix singles pressed onto LP-sized vinyl discs had become the rage in the late ‘70s disco era, and their popularity endured in clubs well into the decades to come. Men Without Hats weren’t a dance band, but they had no qualms about tinkering with the standout track from Rhythm of Youth in hope of gaining wider success.

“So we stopped everything,” Doroschuk says, “and spent a couple of days doing the remix.” Once they finished that project, they sent the master tape off and returned to work on the next record, already in progress.

About a month later, Men Without Hats found themselves with a No. 1 hit on Billboard’s Dance chart. “That was the game-changer,” Doroschuk says with a smile. “We had to put everything on hold; the label put us on a bus and sent us off to promote the album.” At that point in the group’s history, they still didn’t have that distribution deal for the States.

But with a club hit on their hands, Men Without Hats suddenly found themselves being courted by several major record labels. “So,” Doroschuk says, “we picked one and went with it.” The band signed with Backstreet Records, the label that broke Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. “They re-released the album, and the single too,” he says. The band shot a promotional video, “and the whole thing took off.”

Men Without Hats never sought to start a new dance craze; in its original form, “The Safety Dance” was merely the opening song on Side Two of their first long-player. But the U.S. reissue with the remixed version – bolstered by have rotation on MTV – changed all that. “That whole ‘S’ movement came with the video,” Doroschuk says. “The director put that into the video, and kind of made that the dance.”

With a laugh, the Men Without Hats front man says that as a result, at concerts “people were expecting me to be some sort of new wave John Travolta, coming out and teaching them how to do the Safety Dance.” Instead, he recalls, what they got was “a long-haired hippie guy.” But the video delivered on the whimsy, with Doroschuk “prancing around the English countryside with dwarves and Morris dancers.”

He believes that the video’s juxtaposition of visuals evoking British folk with a synthesizer-based sound made for an enduring impression, one that has worn well over time. “You can watch ‘80s videos now and chuckle at the hairdos, neon clothing and pointy shoes,” Doroschuk says. “But the video for ‘The Safety Dance,’ you can’t really tell when it was made.”

Men Without Hats would prove to be more than a one-hit wonder: the title track from the band’s third album, 1987’s “Pop Goes the World” charted in five countries, going Gold in Canada. And prior to a 1992 hiatus, the band landed seven singles on the charts in their native country.

After taking years off to raise his kids, Doroschuk assembled a new Men Without Hats lineup in 2010; to date the 21^st century version of the band has released three albums. A highlight of their latest, On the Moon is the unashamedly nostalgic “I Love the 80s.” It’s a spot-on evocation of the bygone era’s sound and character. But Doroschuk knows what concertgoers really want to hear.

In days past, Men Without Hats audiences might have to “sit through an hour and a half of music they’ve never heard before,” he laughs. “Now, we open the show with ’The Safety Dance.’ We give it to them right away. And I love it.”