Sick Burns!: An 80's Podcast L'Eighties Night Productions

"The Safety Dance" is a song by the Canadian new wave/synth-pop band Men Without Hats, released in 1982. It hit #3 on the U.S. charts the following year. The song was written by lead singer Ivan Doroschuk after he had been kicked out of a club in Ottowa for “pogo dancing,” a bouncy dance that iwas a precursor to mosh dancing. Why do people have such a problem with dancing? And why did “The Hats” decide to set their music video in old-timey England around a maypole? We may never know, bu...

"Mr. Roboto" is a song written by Dennis DeYoung of the band Styx, and was featured on the band’s 11th album, Kilroy Was Here, which also became a rock opera. The song hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1983 and reached #1 in Canada.The band’s ambitious song and concept album dug into themes like censorship and the dehumanization of the working class. The band also thumbed their noses at anti-rock activists’ attempts to prohibit backmasking, which some thought contained hidden messages....

We’re back from long hiatus with one from the Sick Burns vault! Recorded in summer 2021, this episode features a dive into systems of power, their latent hypocrisy, and that feeling of adolescent elation that comes from giving the finger to both. Twisted Sister released “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in 1984 and landed on the PMRC’s “Filthy Fifteen” list for the song’s violent lyrical content (eye roll.). This hard-rocking anti-authority anthem was based on a notable Christmas carol and has b...

Between multiple interviews, a biopic and a broadway show, Tina Turner's story is well known. But there's an HBO documentary about her and it confirms that she is the queen of rock-n-roll, the empress of resilience and the grand duchess of self-respect.Tina Turner's appearance in 1985's Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome was her second movie appearance-- she had appeared in Tommy ten years earlier. While we think her outfit in that movie was chef's kiss mwah!, she revealed in an in...

Cold war chess matches and show tunes collide in "One Night in Bangkok" by Murray Head. The song went to number one in many countries and topped out at #3 in May 1985 in the U.S. and Canada. The song was a single from the concept album “Chess” by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA (and Mama Mia fame) with lyrics by Tim Rice. It later became a musical, starring Murray Head. In the musical, Head plays “Freddie Trumper,” an American Chess master who is in Thailand to fac...

The American treasure that is Dolly Parton wrote “9 to 5” as the theme song for the movie of the same name, in which she co-starred with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. The song topped the charts in 1980, tapping into women’s growing frustrations in the struggle for equality and the never-ending challenges of juggling work and life. The movie follows three women co-workers seeking vengeance on their lecherous boss for his constant sexual harassment. The song and the film took their titles from th...