RAMBLE ON: "Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart

Hello, Patrons (and others!) and welcome to my monthly ramble where I pick a song I have feelings about and dump out all my thoughts. If I can keep this up, I will be turning this into another tier on the ol’ Patreon list, so enjoy it now while it’s still non-exclusive. If it falls by the wayside, then whoops, at least I got to exercise my prose skills which have gone badly neglected these last few years writing for video. Enjoy!

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It’s time to say it: “Sunglasses at Night” is a great song, and wearing your sunglasses at night is super-cool.

This song *is* the ‘80s. You don’t even need to know what it’s about. You just need to hear the title lyric, or even just picture the image: a guy wearing his sunglasses in the dark. It’s a picture of ‘80s cool perfectly of its time, so badass in context and irrevocably dated and lame outside it. A billion pictures pop up in the brain when it comes on: The young Tom Cruise, about to become a superstar, flashing his big yuppie grin under his Wayfarers; The Terminator in his leather jacket, shades covering up his exposed robot eye; ZZ Top cruising down the boulevard at night in their Eliminator hot rod. But you can imagine these things out of the context of the mid-80s; not so of “Sunglasses at Night.” I don’t know if anything could ever capture 1984 as well, not just because of the very specific era of style it evokes, but also because it takes it to its most illogical, impractical extreme. Corey Hart is so devoted to his killer fashion he keeps those damn sunglasses on even when there’s no sun to shield his eyes from. It’s ridiculous. How does he cross the street?

But Corey Hart didn’t write this song to be a fashion statement, or at least not only that. It’s also the idea that his shades at night make him invisible, impervious to the last bits of light that might enter his vision. Wearing sunglasses at night allows him to “watch you weave and breathe your story lines” and “keep track of the vision in [his] eyes.” The cover of darkness, inside and out, gives him the ability to observe the truth of his lover’s deceptions and the clarity to understand it. The sunglasses don’t prevent him from seeing, they prevent the world from seeing *him*. The eyes are the window to the soul, after all, so naturally the shades keep his soul hidden, the nighttime doubly so. It’s as powerful on a metaphorical level as it is laughable when taken literally. As you can imagine this is an attractive vision to me, Todd, the guy whose gimmick is being continually hidden in shadow. I love it, honestly; I value my privacy a lot, all the more so since I became a semi-public figure, and I just love the idea that I could carry my shadows around with me outside of my videos, just by putting on my shades. So cool! Corey Hart has superpowers, basically. Corey Hart is the night.

The synth riff to “Sunglasses at Night” an unmistakable ripoff of The Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This.” Where it differs is that the Eurythmics’ synths remain cold and foreboding for the length of the song; the song gets more urgent in the bridge but it never becomes warm. What “Sweet Dreams” is about is up for interpretation but it definitely isn’t about love. If there’s anything about relationships in Annie Lennox’s lyrics it’s sociopathic exploitation. “Sunglasses at Night,” meanwhile, is at its core a breakup song; his girl has done him wrong. The shades come off; the song kicks into his life. “Don’t switch the blade on the guy in shades, oh no!!” he screams. Oh no indeed. 

Again: ridiculous. The sunglasses are part of his identity now, he’s “the man in shades.” His lover’s betrayal is described with a metaphor of violence. It’s romantic strife rendered as a Batman panel, completely unironically, and backdropped with a rippin’ guitar solo while Corey Hart bobs his head and makes an intense, constipated face. I made a comment in a previous episode that The Lame ‘70s have entirely faded from memory, but I notice now that the The Lame ‘80s are still here. Someone on Twitter speculated that it’s because what was stupid about the ‘80s and what was great about it are actually pretty similar. (Definitely not true of the ‘70s.) “Sunglasses at Night” is dated kitsch, and that’s how it’s remembered, and yet it hits me all the same. Black leather and dark shades, effortlessly cool, completely unaware of how embarrassing it is. You got it made with the guy in shades, oh no. Rating: 8 out of 10