Understanding The Safety Dance

Why do I do this to myself?

What is it that moves a person to dance? For Ivan Doroschuk, lead singer of Men Without Hats, the need to dance was an intrinsic part of himself, one that was under threat by bouncers who insisted his dancing was "unsafe". Ivan disagreed, and in trying to express that, he wound up making one of the greatest dance tracks of all time.

Huge thanks to our Elephant Club members:

Susan Jones
Jill Jones
Duck
Howard Levine
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Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold!

[tone]

Some additional thoughts/corrections:

1) This video is about the original version of the song. There's also the video version, which is short, combines a lot of things a lot more quickly, and is, in my opinion, worse, and then there's a club remix where the main difference appears to be that the intro is a lot longer, but I chose to talk about the version I like best.

2) There seems to be some disagreement online about which exact drum machine this song used. Some sources say it's the LM-1, others say its successor, the LinnDrum. The LM-1 makes more sense to me, given the timing: The LinnDrum was released in 1982, and the album Rhythm of Youth was recorded in the very beginning of that year, so while I can't find an exact release date for the LinnDrum, there's a good chance it wasn't even an option for the band. The LinnDrum was also a much more popular and common thing later in the decade, so it seems plausible to me that insufficiently rigorous sources would simply attribute LM-1 parts to it 'cause it's close enough. Most of my digging seems to imply that the LM-1 is correct, but it's possible I missed something, in which case I'm sorry, I did my best.

3) Doroschuk has said that all the parts were played by hand with no sequencers, but if so the drum part definitely sounds to me like it's been quantized after the fact.

4) One thing I wish I'd been clearer about: The bass rhythm is not actually a tresillo. Having the two-note pairs breaks that structure, as I described. My point in bringing it up was that the rhythm has tresillo-like qualities, which are interestingly combined with the more straight-ahead groove underneath it to create something that isn't completely either one. That's why, throughout the video, I refer to groups of 3-3-2, rather than tresillos.

5) For the spoken vocals, I'm using pitch-zone notation, which I described in my video on pitch in rap. Basically, higher and lower notes correspond to higher and lower inflections but do not reflect precise intervals. It's a way of including some inflection information in parts that don't really have a definitive melody.

6) When I was talking about the line moving in 4ths, you may have been reminded of the Lydian Chromatic Concept if you've seen that video. (Or read that book.) I was reminded of it, anyway, and I considered mentioning it, but actually applying that model felt like a pretty significant stretch, and I didn't want to bring it up just to throw some fancy words around. Still! Some sort of vague connection there, probably, if you really want to go digging for it.

7) In a couple parts, most notably the synth melodies, the isolation process failed to properly capture the attacks that happen at the same time as those massive snares. I've notated them as they are in the song, but they may not perfectly line up with the isolated tracks.

8) I've chosen to leave out a couple synth accent parts because I didn't really have anything more insightful to say about them than "they are also there" and it didn't seem worth filling the video with a bunch of those.

9) I also didn't list which synths the lead parts were played on because honestly I'm not sure. There appears to be some disagreement on that too: Some sources say the lead synth is a Prophet-5, others say it's a Polymoog. I don't know enough about '80s synths to tell for sure, and with the amount of conflicting reports I found, it didn't seem like a good idea to make a statement either way. I'd rather leave information out than risk reinforcing misinformation, y'know?

10) "Pretty cute" is a technical music theory term for when something that happens in the music is pretty cute.

11) Whoops, there are kicks on the beats underneath that last barrage of hand-claps. My bad.

[RyanHarris]

Pogo dancers and bouncers - an ironically named rivalry on the dance floor

[Atarimetal]

As an actual member of Men Without Hats in the 80s I loved your explanation, however the song wasn’t written with as much forethought as you might think! It was largely just a function of the machines. The Linn pattern was probably stock and the bass in our songs was almost always straight 8ths. I think the sync box was a JL Cooper that sent a trigger to a modified Prophet 5 every eight note. I think Ivan called it “pulse bass”. Safety Dance happened when the box was found to be able to send multiple clock pulses. You just held down a key on the Prophet and you got the triggers, controlling the pitch with the keyboard. Damn cool for the time. Later on, the bass lines were played on a real bass by Al Gunn, and even later on a keyboard manually by Marika Tjelios. Playing fast 8ths for a whole show proved to be a wrist smasher, soMarika developed a technique of using 2 or 3 fingers on the same key to lessen hand fatigue. Neat!

BTW, I loved the doodles! Do you save them? I’d love to put them up in my studio!

Thanks,
Bruce

[davidcoleman]

Fascinating. The song is so dance-friendly that it fitted the stepping for the English Morris Dancing that formed part of the footage in the video version. I belong to the Chippenham Town Morris Men and danced in the video. We had just invented the dance - named 'Monkton Park' - a few months before we were asked to take part in the filming. The stepping draws heavily on dances from the Fieldtown Morris tradition, and it was sheer luck that our newest dance happened to fit perfectly with the music. The video was filmed at a tiny village called West Kington and we had a blast hanging out with the band and all the crew. Those of us who are still dancing are long in the tooth these days, but we still end all of our public performances with 'Monkton Park'. One or two of the guys still have Men Without Hats badges on their kit. Happy days.

[ROMANTIKILLER]

I must say that I did not expect to see an almost 25' long analysis of The Safety Dance of all things.

[davidddaniels]

“You know, that dance wasn’t as safe as people said it was.”-Philip J Fry

[jaydemetrick]

The octave C beeps always reminded me of a type of "breaking news" type warning or a "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system" that you could sometimes get on the radio. Kinda '50s-'60s style. Or maybe those "check both ways before you cross the street kids" type things that were big in the '70s.

[mccartney]

proud of your ability to draw the maple leaf. not even many of us canadians can do that.

[reno]

I laughed when you said “to keep it from being too distracting” and then drew a squirrel.

[geoffreypiltz]

The best pogoing I ever saw was at a biker disco. Some punks came in and for some unknown reason one of the bikers seized a punk by the collar and the punk seized the biker by the collar. They then pogoed locked together. They bounced about face to face for an entire record track. Everybody there thought it was one of the most entertaining things they had ever seen.

[datavalisofficial]

This song means so much to me, i have lupus and many respiratory issues, and i was in a terrible health state(im very good nowadays by the way!) back in 2012
And by then i was bed ridden, even had issues with bathing by myself, so my parents had to help me with each task(which sucks when you're 14), and at around the turning point, a bit before things started to get better i was introduced to this song through a Nichijou AMV(anime music video) of this song, i know, some people could argue its not the best way to listen to this song first time but to me it was! Not only do i love nichijou but i loved the AMV and loved the song

And to this day i remember when i started showering by myself, i'd wake up very early like 5am-ish, when the sky is that greyish blue, before the sunrise, and i didnt even turn on the light, i just let that blue optimistic, faint but hopeful light come in through the window as i listened to this song on my phone, its a rather weird experience i know but geez do this song mean to me, specially this small moment of independence and victory

I didnt even know how to speak english back then! i just liked the vibe of the song, all i knew was the meaning of the sentence "we can dance" and i used to think "yea i can, i think i can dance" and yea we can dance!
(Just dont do it in the shower)

[eicdesigner]

So, you can listen to music. You can know the lyrics. You can know day, month, year of writing and release. You can know everything about the musicians and group. Or you can tear into every beat and instrument like this. I have worked in engineering since 1985 and tear into industrial instrumentation and PLC/DCS control systems to the exact same degree this guy does. I also apply knowledge of numerous software programs, just like he does. To many this may seem insanely intricate and perhaps even annoying, but I appreciate what he is doing and why. Fascinating how much there is to know about the composition of music, instruments, synthesizers, and the programs they use. Bravo, sir. Bravo!

[dylanjoyce]

The stopmotion quality of your pointing the beat direction is really good.

[JustinCarpenter]

The magic of The Safety Dance is that it's lyrically an exhortation, and it's musically a *demonstration* of the exact thing it's exhorting you to do. As you observe, it's not simple, at all -- it's deceptively well-crafted to *seem* simple, so it still *works* as a dance song. Exhorting you to dance in the words, to add "your life" to "mine, " to throw yourself into the melting pot of individual elements to create a whole with a life of its own beyond the sum of its parts, the music does exactly that, with, as you note, pieces weaving in and out, stepping back then returning, senses of position, tiny shifts in the polyrhythmic tapestry. As you observe, it has melodic elements, but at its heart, it's a rhythmic song -- a *dance* song -- and a surprisingly intricate, layered, polyrhythmic one. It's so subtle in The Safety Dance, but I've occasionally compared its layers to the layers in Paul Simon's Boy in the Bubble -- and though these are very different songs, with very different energy and message, you'll see, I think, similarities in the way they use layered polyrhythms.

I've spoken about the song at length lyrically -- about its timelessness, its elemental purity of message, and its lyrical impact, decades later, simple, to the point, clear and compelling. Thank you so much for illustrating, in ways I doubt I could have, how *musically* intricate it is, and just how much is going on in the arrangement, here. It's a deceptively nuanced, complex, brilliantly-crafted song, and you've absolutely showcased *why* this is.

[Leftatalbuquerque]

What you omit is that the Pogo was a result of the fast tempos of New Wave songs like Rock Lobster, Turning Japanese and Echo Beach. Safety Dance was an older, Disco tempo that allowed for more time for movements in between beats.

[JamesOKeefe-US]

The US postal service logo for consistency, well played :)

[BillPeschel]

As a left-hander, it amused and comforted me to see someone else write from right to left. I do that in my notebook, and sometimes I'll add notes to my daily to-do list at the bottom, from bottom to top.

[nostalgia]

as someone that primarily listens to "dance"-ish electronic music (and a big fan of your channel), it was nice to see you talk about a song as being in "layers" instead of sections, as thats more how i personally experience the music that i enjoy

love your work!!

[playgroundchooser]

YES! The *greatest* composition in human history is finally on 12 Tone! I'm only half joking. Dang I love this song. :)

[The_Horse-leafs_Cabbage]

As a lover of prog rock and tech death, but still early in my bass and guitar playing... I've really started to appreciate what goes into these "simpler" tracks.
This vid, your recent vid on punk rock, and my recent excursions into Rammstein's discography have made me appreciate and regain my enjoyment of songs that do a lot, even if they aren't overly complicated.