Listen up! It's 2024 and Men Without Hats are still safety dancing

Montreal hosts Totally Tubular Festival, where you'll see how 1980s music influenced TikTok, what we're seeing and hearing now.

The 1980s is the decade that just won’t die.

For those of us old enough to remember, the common wisdom at the time was that the synth-driven pop of the ’80s was vastly inferior to the classic rock of the ’70s and ’60s. But the ironic twist some four decades later is that so many contemporary bands from the Arctic Monkeys to The 1975 have been influenced by ’80s new wave and artists from that decade pull in big crowds all over the planet.

Even TikTok has jumped on the bandwagon, with a slew of videos on the social-media platform with kids filming their parents dancing like they did in the ’80s.

One guy who knows all about the ’80s revival is Ivan Doroschuk. The former Montrealer, who now calls Victoria, B.C., home, is the co-founder, lead singer and chief songwriter of Men Without Hats, a band that formed here in the late ’70s as a punk group and then by the early ’80s became one of Canada’s first electro-pop acts. Their 1983 hit The Safety Dance remains one of the decade’s most famous songs and still routinely turns up in commercials, TV shows and movies.

“You listen to the radio now and it’s all so ’80s-influenced,” Doroschuk said in a recent phone interview from his hotel room in Phoenix.

He was in Arizona on tour with the Totally Tubular Festival, a 1980s multi-artist show that will be bringing its vintage electronic tunes to Place Bell in Laval on Tuesday, July 23. Aside from Men Without Hats, the line-up includes Thomas Dolby, Bow Wow Wow, Wang Chung, Tom Bailey from the Thompson Twins, Modern English, Tommy Tutone, and Eddie Munoz from the Plimsouls.

“We get our original fans (at our shows) and they often bring their kids,” Doroschuk said. “Even their grandkids are showing up to these shows now. It’s a real family affair. It’s really crossed generations now. The more we do these things, the younger the crowds are getting.”

The Cure, one of the iconic bands of the ’80s, sold out two nights at the Bell Centre last summer even though the British goth new wave band hasn’t released an album of new material since 2008. In the past, they might fill up half a Bell Centre. And at those shows, there were loads of parents with their teenage or twentysomething kids.

“The ’80s has that cachet to it,” Doroschuk said. “There was all this new technology. The clothes were new, the hairstyles were new, and it was bright and it was colourful. And the movies targeted teens. It was all about the Brat Pack. I think the kids are latching on to that. Plus the ’80s just had good songs. It’s the songs people remember. People are into the music. They remember the melodies. The ’90s were a bit of a downer and then rap music came in. I love Eminem but I don’t know how many Eminem songs people are going to be singing around the campfire in 20 years. Whereas the ’80s was a very rich melodic era. It was unabashed pop music.”

There’s a bunch of videos on TikTok with older folks dancing to Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy, a defining dance track of the era. The songs do indeed still have resonance today — tracks like Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence, A Flock of Seagulls’ I Ran (So Far Away), Bow Wow Wow’s I Want Candy, Modern English’s I Melt With You, The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me and on and on.

Modeste Blaise is a popular local DJ who hosts the ’80s-themed Party Rétro du Taverna at the Plateau club O Patro Vys once a month. This month’s edition is this Saturday. Blaise said people like the ’80s music because it hearkens back to a more exciting time.

“The music today is totally formatted,” Blaise said. “Back then, the music was physical, it was visual. People could talk, they weren’t just looking at their phones. It wasn’t boring at all. It was exciting. The kids have nostalgia. They want to relive the ’80s because they were told the ’80s were great. The kids are from Gen Z and their parents are Gen X and so Gen Zs are all about the ’80s because their parents are Gen Xs. They listen to Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo. And that’s it. That’s what my (18-year-old) daughter listens to and then she goes ’80s. This music meant something.”

Doroschuk returned to touring around 13 years ago and he said everywhere the band goes — from South Africa to Australia to Scandinavia — they find people who’re still in love with the ’80s.

“They have ’80s-themed parties, they dress up, they’re wearing their neon clothes, head bands, spandex pants; they really go for it,” Doroschuk said.

And they’re really into The Safety Dance.

“We’re embedded in popular culture, from Family Guy to The Simpsons,” he said. “Glee brought us a whole new generation of listeners. I think it boils down to the fact that people still need to be told that they can dance if they want to. It’s as simple as that. It was a message of freedom. Especially in the era of social media where there’s a lot of pressure on kids to conform. So a song that says march to your own beat, I think that resonates with people.”

Brendan Kelly  •  Montreal Gazette