What do Akron, Ohio, the English Channel, and Egypt have in common? If you were to say “nothing,” we wouldn’t blame you for the assumption. But thanks to The Bangles’ first No. 1 single from 1986, that assumption would be wrong. All three locales, as disjointed as they might sound when smushed together into a single sentence, played a role in the creation of “Walk Like an Egyptian”.
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From its quintessentially 80s pop production to a music video that probably should have been sponsored by Aquanet (oh, the bangs), “Walk Like an Egyptian” is a fun, albeit unserious, addition to the late 80s mainstream music canon. The third single from the pop-rock group’s second album, Different Light, was the first Bangles track to hit No. 1 on the charts. The album’s first single, “Manic Monday”, was technically their first hit, although it peaked at No. 2.
The fact that this song remains as ubiquitous today as it was in the late 80s is a testament not only to the catchiness of the track but also to the general public’s love of an easy, choreographed dance. Years before we were crossing our arms and shimmying our hips to the “Macarena”, everyone was following Susanna Hoffs’ instructions: “Slide your feet up the street / bend your back / Shift your arm / Then you pull it back.”
“Walk Like an Egyptian” Has Roots in Ohio, England, and Egypt
The Bangles were from Los Angeles, nearly 8,000 miles away from the North African country the pop-rock group sings about in their 1986 hit. And how would a relatively small town in northeastern Ohio and the English Channel come into the mix, anyway? We have Liam Sternberg to thank for this strange and unusual geographical concoction.
Sternberg, songwriter and Akron, Ohio, native, spoke to the Akron Beacon Journal in 2021 about how he came up with the idea for “Walk Like an Egyptian”. “I used to keep notebooks with lyrics—just lyrics—with no idea about what the melodies would be.” Sternberg brought his notebook with him on a boat ride across the English Channel, which can be notoriously choppy under the right conditions.
A little tipsy himself, Sternberg observed how he and the other riders struggled to stay upright as their boat bounced along the channel. The way people were moving their arms to keep their balance reminded Sternberg of the way figures in Egyptian hieroglyphs held their arms.
Years later, Sternberg was flipping through his notebook when he came upon the line “walk like an Egyptian.” Determined to turn it into a hit, he began crafting the rest of the song, even going so far as to buy a portrait of ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti and telling it, “Please make this a No. 1, and I’ll come to Egypt to see you.”
Whether Nefertiti or another muse, it worked. “When that demo was done, I thought, ‘Well, if this isn’t a hit record, I’ll never write one.’ It’s not an arrogance. The song had all the ingredients that a hit should have.” And indeed, a hit it would become.
Photo by Fryderyk Gabowicz/picture alliance via Getty Images
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