"The Safety Dance" is a song by Canadian pop band Men Without Hats, released in 1982 as the second single from their album Rhythm of Youth. The song was written by lead singer Ivan Doroschuk after he had been kicked out of a club for pogo dancing, or “pogoing”.
The song entered the Canadian top 50 in February 1983, peaking at number 11 on May 14. In the meantime, "The Safety Dance" was released in the US on March 16, but did not enter the US charts for a few months. When it finally did, the record became a bigger hit than it had been in Canada, breaking into the top ten in August and eventually reaching its peak position of number 3 in September and October and staying on the Billboard Hot 100 for 24 weeks. It also reached number 1 on Cash Box and the Billboard Dance Chart.
Doroschuk has explained that "The Safety Dance" is a protest against bouncers prohibiting dancers from pogo dancing to 1980s new wave music in clubs when disco was dying and new wave was up and coming. Pogoing was different from disco dancing because it was done individually instead of with partners and involved holding the torso rigid and thrashing about. To uninformed bystanders this could look dangerous, especially if pogoers accidentally bounced into one another (the more deliberately violent evolution of pogoing is slamdancing). Thus, the song is a protest and a call for freedom of expression (and not, as he had to explain later, a song about safe sex).
