Looky here. It’s your favourite series. It’s back. And this ‘S’ section might take a while. We’ll get through it together. I can’t wait. And it begins with something a frequent reader here may find unusual or quite left-field. It’s ‘The Safety Dance’ by Men Without Hats. A one-hit wonder of sorts. I’ve not listened to any other song by the group. I don’t really wish to either. And while some might find this song incredibly cheesy in that way that songs from the ’80s tend to be, I think there’s a lot of sincerity to be found here. The music video doesn’t really help emphasise the latter. Singer and songwriter Ivan Doroschuk hams it up in front of the camera alongside a little person and a blond-haired woman who provides the female backing vocals. Neither of the two are part of the actual musical group. But if I’ve got my headphones in and the synthy introduction gets going, I can’t help but bop my head along to it.

The whole meaning behind the song can be found on its Wikipedia page, which I don’t want to regurgitate back to you. But even without looking at it, the song’s message is very clear. Doroschuk sings for the people who just want to dance, have fun, be free to do what they want hand-in-hand/in solidarity with other like-minded individuals. “We can dance if we want to/We can leave your friends behind/’Cause your friends don’t dance/And if they don’t dance, then they’re no friends of mine”. The opening lyrics right there. Rolls of the tongue, and the melodies throughout are memorable to boot. To bring the listeners all together, he calls for us to enact the phrase that makes up the song’s title, as demonstrated in the music video, by seemingly taking both arms and jerking them into the shape of an ‘S’.

Honestly, I can’t recall how I ever got to know this song in the first place. There was a scene in The Simpsons where Homer sings it and changes the lyrics a little, but I thought that was just the character making up a random song rather than it being a reference to an actual thing. Plenty of people will know it in a scene from Scrubs, but between me and you I’ve never watched the show. In fact, I have a clear memory of my sister talking to me about the song for some vague reason and referring to the Simpsons scene. She clearly knew about it more than me. So I guess I have her to thank for properly introducing me to it.