Men Without Hats - The Safety Dance

Retro

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Still love this classic from 1982. It's got a fun video set in the middle ages which looks silent, which sort of follows the music. I think the lipsync might be quite a bit off too, which would add to the effect.

So, what's the song about? The ultra brief images of missiles, fighter jets and similar in the last couple of seconds, plus the title suggest that this is an anti-war* song, despite the apparent fun theme. The singer's slightly posh British accent adds to the fun theme, too. See what you think. Oh and why is it so short at just 2:45? I want moar! Those synths sound amazing and the whole sound is really catchy with a good bass line.

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*The Falklands war was on at the time, so could quite likely be that. Google is your friend.
 

Retro

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There's no official instrumental for this song unfortunately, but I've managed to find a faux one created with X-MINUS PRO. While the volume does fluctuate quite noticeably, it otherwise does a good job of creating an instrumental out of this. Have a listen and see what you think and if you find a better version, please post it here.

I so love this track! Can't stop playing it right now, both versions.


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Retro

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Check out this cool ridiculously in-depth analysis of The Safety Dance. The sped up drawings illustrating the explanations are very entertainng to watch.

Safety dance.jpg

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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.
 

Crims

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A favourite song of mine. He's canadian though and filmed here in the UK.
 
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