![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Men_Without_Hats.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe 1980s were a landmark era in popular music. The rise of MTV brought a greater emphasis on fashion and visuals. Many artists \u2013 guided by their labels and\/or management \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
Starting out in 1977 as a punk band, Men Without Hats \u2013 fronted by singer Ivan Doroschuk \u2013 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<\/i> just eight months after MTV premiered, they didn\u2019t even have a U.S. distribution deal. A followup to their debut EP Folk of the 80\u2019s<\/i>, the album would make few ripples on the pop music landscape.<\/p>\n
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Undaunted, the group returned to the recording studio and began work on another record. \u201cWe were halfway through recording Folk of the 80\u2019s (Part III)<\/i>,\u201d recalls Doroschuk. \u201cAnd we got a call from our record label: \u2018Everybody\u2019s doing dance club remixes. You have to make 12\u201d remix of \u201cThe Safety Dance.\u201d\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Dance remix singles pressed onto LP-sized vinyl discs had become the rage in the late \u201870s disco era, and their popularity endured in clubs well into the decades to come. Men Without Hats weren\u2019t a dance band, but they had no qualms about tinkering with the standout track from Rhythm of Youth<\/i> in hope of gaining wider success.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we stopped everything,\u201d Doroschuk says, \u201cand spent a couple of days doing the remix.\u201d Once they finished that project, they sent the master tape off and returned to work on the next record, already in progress.<\/p>\n
About a month later, Men Without Hats found themselves with a No. 1 hit on Billboard<\/i>\u2019s Dance chart. \u201cThat was the game-changer,\u201d Doroschuk says with a smile. \u201cWe had to put everything on hold; the label put us on a bus and sent us off to promote the album.\u201d At that point in the group\u2019s history, they still didn\u2019t have that distribution deal for the States.<\/p>\n
But with a club hit on their hands, Men Without Hats suddenly found themselves being courted by several major record labels. \u201cSo,\u201d Doroschuk says, \u201cwe picked one and went with it.\u201d The band signed with Backstreet Records, the label that broke Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. \u201cThey re-released the album, and the single too,\u201d he says. The band shot a promotional video, \u201cand the whole thing took off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Men Without Hats never sought to start a new dance craze; in its original form, \u201cThe Safety Dance\u201d was merely the opening song on Side Two of their first long-player. But the U.S. reissue with the remixed version \u2013 bolstered by have rotation on MTV \u2013 changed all that. \u201cThat whole \u2018S\u2019 movement came with the video,\u201d Doroschuk says. \u201cThe director put that into the video, and kind of made that the dance.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a laugh, the Men Without Hats front man says that as a result, at concerts \u201cpeople were expecting me to be some sort of new wave John Travolta, coming out and teaching them how to do the Safety Dance.\u201d Instead, he recalls, what they got was \u201ca long-haired hippie guy.\u201d But the video delivered on the whimsy, with Doroschuk \u201cprancing around the English countryside with dwarves and Morris dancers.\u201d<\/p>\n
He believes that the video\u2019s juxtaposition of visuals evoking British folk with a synthesizer-based sound made for an enduring impression, one that has worn well over time. \u201cYou can watch \u201880s videos now and chuckle at the hairdos, neon clothing and pointy shoes,\u201d Doroschuk says. \u201cBut the video for \u2018The Safety Dance,\u2019 you can\u2019t really tell when<\/i> it was made.\u201d<\/p>\n
Men Without Hats would prove to be more than a one-hit wonder: the title track from the band\u2019s third album, 1987\u2019s \u201cPop Goes the World\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
After taking years off to raise his kids, Doroschuk assembled a new Men Without Hats lineup in 2010; to date the 21st<\/sup> century version of the band has released three albums. A highlight of their latest, On the Moon<\/i> is the unashamedly nostalgic \u201cI Love the 80s.\u201d It\u2019s a spot-on evocation of the bygone era\u2019s sound and character. But Doroschuk knows what concertgoers really want to hear.<\/p>\n In days past, Men Without Hats audiences might have to \u201csit through an hour and a half of music they\u2019ve never heard before,\u201d he laughs. \u201cNow, we open the show with \u2019The Safety Dance.\u2019 We give it to them right away. And I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 1980s were a landmark era in popular music. The rise of MTV brought a greater emphasis on fashion and visuals. Many artists \u2013 guided by their labels and\/or management […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30735,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3505,26,41,50],"tags":[5852],"class_list":["post-30734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance","category-electronica","category-interview","category-new-wave","tag-men-without-hats","cat-3505-id","cat-26-id","cat-41-id","cat-50-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30736,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30734\/revisions\/30736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}