Welcome to the first installment of the EHSDA Song of the Week. It’s Friday and we want to have a little fun, so each week, we’re going to highlight a song that is somehow related to safety. Some songs will be more safety-centric than others, but just go with it. Like we said, it’s Friday.
For our first Song of the Week, we’re going to get a little obvious and go with a one-hit wonder from the ’80s: “The Safety Dance” by Canadian synth-pop act Men Without Hats. Released in Canada in 1982, the song didn’t come out in the U.S. until the spring of 1983. It ended up peaking at #3 on the U.S. singles chart in the fall, spending a total of 24 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.
Men Without Hats frontman Ivan Doroschuk has said the song was a protest against bouncers in new wave clubs who wouldn’t let dancers do the pogo. The bouncers claimed the dance posed danger to other people on the dance floor, so they threatened to eject anyone who pogoed. Not sure how much pogoing is happening in modern workplaces, but safety is safety.
The song is ridiculously catchy, but it gets a safety theme stuck in your head, so it can’t be all bad.