Coup De Stereo -- "Safety Dance" Versus "Politics of Dancing"

You know the drill. I take two complementary songs and let them duke it out in my brain until one song emerges triumphant and the other slinks off defeated.

In the early '80s, you could do pretty much anything as long as you danced to it. Take Men Without Hats' immortal 1983 No. 3 hit "Safety Dance." This song is about dancing safely. Attaining this level of safety, the lyrics tell us, entails ditching your nondancing friends. Man, nondancing friends are the worst -- they grow up to be rock critics.

That same year, Re-Flex took "The Politics of Dancing" to No. 24 on the U.S. charts. It's kind of hard to figure out what this one is about. Dancing to politics and feeling good about it, I guess. The lyrics ask authoritatively, "Is this message understood?" Don't question it ... just start dancing to politics and feelin' good!

Hmmm. This is a tough one.

"Safety Dance" has safety on its side. I have a fear of pain so that makes safety good. But, it's also by a Canadian band, which would now be a big plus but back in 1983, this was considered a minus. The song is also basically retarded. Yet, when you add a couple of decades to "retarded" you get a good thing ("Safety Dance" now sounds like Kanye West minus the vocoder).

"The Politics of Dancing" made rock critics and college students mad because it actually has nothing to do with politics. I guess that should be a bad thing, but nobody but rock critics and college students actually cares about the political content of songs. It also sounds halfway between the Fixx and the new edition of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (minus the Neanderthal haircut and the misplaced coolness factor).

I'm kind of leaning toward Re-Flex because I've been listening to both songs on "repeat" for a good while now and "The Politics of Dancing" is somewhat less annoying. I also like it when the singer asks "Is the message understood?" a whole lot -- it reminds me of getting lectured by my father about how to hang his tools back up in the garage.

Listen to both 37 more times and have an epiphany.

So, the loser is (drumroll) ... The Killers' "Human."

"Human" reminds me of Ultravox's "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes," another 1983 song about dancing, this time while crying your eyes out (very hard to do safely and even harder to do while feeling good). Plus, if you are going to ape Ultravox, you might as well go for the superior "Reap the Wild Wind" (what a great song!) and not "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes." The final factor to make the axe drop is that the Killers' "Human" actually dares to ask the question "Are you human or are you dancer?"

That could be the lamest song lyric I have ever heard in my entire life.

Come home, "Safety Dance" and "Politics of Dancing" -- all is forgiven.