The 1980s File Feature
I Know What Boys Like
The Waitresses' "I Know What Boys Like" (1982): New Wave Skepticism Hits the Hot 100 "I Know What Boys Like" was among the more unexpected entries on the Bil…
01 The Story
The Waitresses' "I Know What Boys Like" (1982): New Wave Skepticism Hits the Hot 100
"I Know What Boys Like" was among the more unexpected entries on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1982, representing a strand of new wave wit and skepticism that mainstream chart radio was only beginning to accommodate. The single entered the chart on May 8, 1982, debuting at position 84, and climbed to its peak position of number 62 during the chart week of May 29, 1982. The six-week chart run was brief but notable given the song's unconventional character and its distance from the prevailing commercial pop styles of the moment.
The Waitresses were formed in Akron, Ohio, the same regional scene that had produced Devo and Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, a fact that situates them within one of the more creatively unusual pockets of American new wave. The group was led by guitarist Chris Butler, who wrote "I Know What Boys Like," and featured Patty Donahue as lead vocalist. Donahue's delivery was deliberately flat and deadpan, a performance approach that was as much comedic as musical and that gave the song its distinctive quality. Butler's songwriting combined sharp observation with a minimalist musical approach rooted in the post-punk aesthetic that had flourished in the late 1970s.
The song had actually been recorded and released before its chart appearance, originally appearing as part of the Akron compilation Akron, Ohio in 1978 before the Waitresses recorded a new version for the Ze Records label in the early 1980s. Ze Records was a New York-based independent that had carved out a distinctive identity by signing acts that combined new wave, funk, and art-rock influences in unusual proportions. The label's roster included Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Was (Not Was), and other acts whose commercial viability was secondary to their artistic distinctiveness.
The Waitresses received significant exposure through the soundtrack to the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which introduced "I Know What Boys Like" to a large audience that might not have encountered it through independent music channels. The film's soundtrack also included material from Jackson Browne, The Go-Go's, and other acts of the era, and its commercial success gave the Waitresses a promotional platform considerably larger than anything Ze Records could have provided alone.
Radio acceptance of the song was somewhat limited by its unusual character; many mainstream pop stations were not prepared to accommodate a record that operated so far outside the conventions of commercial pop production. The Hot 100 peak of number 62 reflected partial mainstream success, the song finding an audience but not achieving the kind of crossover that would have required radio formats to fully embrace its sensibility. MTV, which launched in August 1981, provided an alternative promotional channel for acts like the Waitresses whose visual and conceptual identity was strong enough to translate into video format.
Chris Butler went on to write the group's most enduring song, "Christmas Wrapping," which has become a perennial holiday radio staple in the decades since its 1981 release and arguably represents the group's most lasting commercial legacy. The Waitresses released two studio albums, Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful? (1982) and Bruiseology (1983), before disbanding. Patty Donahue died in 1996, cutting short any possibility of reunion. The group's brief catalog has been reassessed over the decades as an important artifact of early American new wave.
The chart success of "I Know What Boys Like", modest as it was, demonstrated that new wave's comedic and ironic modes could find a mainstream audience if given sufficient promotional support. The song's combination of clever observation, deadpan delivery, and minimal production was genuinely unusual on a chart dominated by polished pop production, and its presence there, however brief, marked an important moment in the broader negotiation between alternative and mainstream musical cultures in the early 1980s.
02 Song Meaning
Power, Performance, and Self-Knowledge: The Wit of "I Know What Boys Like"
"I Know What Boys Like" is a song about the experience of knowing yourself to be desired and having complicated feelings about that knowledge. Patty Donahue delivers the lyric with a flatness that initially reads as cool detachment but gradually reveals itself to be something more nuanced: a combination of genuine self-awareness, mild amusement, and the particular kind of power that comes from understanding a dynamic clearly while the other party remains confused about it. The narrator knows what boys like; the implication is that this knowledge gives her a form of control that is as alienating as it is advantageous.
Chris Butler's lyric operates through understatement, which is a demanding mode for popular song because it requires the listener to supply the emotional content that the text withholds. The narrator does not explain how she feels about being the object of desire; she simply states that she knows what produces it. This withholding of interpretive guidance forces the listener to pay close attention and to bring their own experience of similar dynamics to the song. The result is a lyric that different listeners can hear in different ways, depending on whether they identify more with the narrator's position of knowledge or with the frustrated desire she observes.
The feminist dimension of the song was recognized at the time and has been more fully articulated in subsequent critical attention. The narrator's knowledge is a kind of power that operates within a system she did not design and may not endorse. She knows what boys like because she has been required to pay attention to it, to learn its contours and expectations. This knowledge is not presented as a triumph; it is presented as simply accurate, a description of how things are rather than a celebration of them.
The deadpan delivery Donahue employs is itself meaningful. In popular music, vocal performance typically signals emotional investment: the singer cares about what they are singing, and this caring is communicated through dynamics, phrasing, and expressive coloration. Donahue's flatness refuses this convention, suggesting that the narrator has moved beyond simple emotional investment in the situation she describes. She is not angry, not sad, not triumphant; she simply knows. This emotional neutrality is more unsettling than any of those affective alternatives would be.
The Akron new wave context from which the Waitresses emerged valued exactly this kind of conceptual sophistication and refusal of conventional emotionalism. Devo had made careers out of the detached examination of human behavior and social conditioning. "I Know What Boys Like" participates in that project while operating in a more specifically gendered register, applying the cool analytical gaze of new wave to the particular dynamics of heterosexual desire and the knowledge asymmetries it produces.
The song has aged well precisely because the situation it describes is neither historically specific nor culturally bounded. The experience of being desired, of knowing you are desired, and of having complicated feelings about that knowledge is not unique to 1982. The Waitresses captured something durable in their brief chart appearance, a moment of self-aware comedy that also carries genuine insight about the social choreography of attraction. The deadpan exterior of the performance conceals, or perhaps reveals, a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of what it means to be an object of desire in a world where that status carries both privileges and costs. Patty Donahue's delivery is the instrument through which all of this meaning is communicated, and the precision of her performance, which makes detachment feel expressive rather than empty, is the song's central artistic achievement.
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