It’s Safe To Dance! It’s A Safety Dance!

I don’t care what Al Gore says. This is why they invented the internet.

So we can watch videos like this:

For anyone not aware, that was the official music video for Men Without Hats best-selling single “The Safety Dance.” The sound is considered a combo-genre of Synthpop and New Wave, and the music video portrays medieval clothing, farm-animal masks, and an attention-starved little person.

That little person, by the way, is British actor Mike Edmonds, who up until this point had been best known for operating Jabba the Hutt’s tail in Return of the Jedi.

Many listeners, apparently motivated by the songs brain-cell-killing hook or motivational video, allege that the song is lyrically brilliant and boasts deep interpretative meaning. These experts claim the song is either a call for safe sex during the initial outbreak of AIDS, or an anti-nuclear weapons protest.

These assumptions couldn’t be more incorrect, according to the songs writer Ivan Doroschuk (the guy in the video running around with Edmonds). Doroschuk has repeatedly said the song is a protest against club bouncers who prevented patrons from pogoing, “a dance where the dancers jump up and down while remaining in the same locations… (keeping) their torso stiff, their arms rigid, and their legs close together.” This apparently happened a lot in the early 80s when Disco was thankfully dying and New Wave was tragically becoming more popular.

So despite real issues such as HIV and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Men Without Hats saw pogoing as an issue more worthy of their lyrics.

Whatever the songs true meaning, there is little denying the hilarity of this video, and we here at FingBing recommend you send it to all your friends, as it is border-line impossible to have a bad day if you watch this video, say, six times.

However, never forget the warnings of Futurama’s Philip J. Fry, who once heeded “That dance wasn’t as safe as they said it was.”