Corey Hart is Sending Me Some Really Mixed Messages

Like most Americans, I often lie awake at night wondering what Corey Hart is trying to say with the song “Sunglasses at Night.”  For starters, here’s what Corey Hart looks like:

As you can see, he’s trying to look tough, but not too tough because he’s Canadian.  So when we get a song called, “Sunglasses at Night,” you can kind of assume we’re sticking with the tough-guy (relatively speaking) thing.  And that’s consistent with a line like, “don’t switch the blade on the guy in shades, oh no.”  See, because he’s tough enough that you don’t want to risk pulling a knife on him (but not so tough that he can’t make it sound like a polite warning).

If that were it, then I’d move on with my life, content that I had Corey’s oeuvre well enough in hand.

But then he says things like, “she’s deceiving me/It cuts my security,” and that’s more of a “betrayed by your woman” line, and then “‘Cause you got it made with the guy in shades oh no” is more like hey, join my gang and you’ll be safe from other potentially dangerous Canadians, like Snow.  And then we have “And I wear my sunglasses at night/So I can so I can/Forget my name while you collect your claim,” which might be more about the wife of an amnesiac who is getting disability insurance on his behalf.  Or at least faking amnesia for that purpose.  I don’t know if amnesia correlates to nocturnal-sunglasses-wearing; I should probably look that up.