Songfacts®:

• In a Songfacts interview with Rick Springfield, when we asked if there were any dark undercurrents in his songs, he replied: "The song 'Don't Talk To Strangers' was my girlfriend who became my wife. I was screwing around on the road, and I was worried that she was doing the same thing while I was away. So it was my paranoia to her: I'm getting laid, but don't you go do the same thing, because it'll really upset me."
  
  The girl in question is Barbara Porter, who was working at Sound City recording studios when she met Springfield. They got married in 1984 and had two children together.
• The phrase "don't talk to strangers" is something children in America are told to keep them out of trouble. Springfield is Australian, but he moved to America in 1972.
• This was the lead single from Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet, the follow-up to Springfield's breakthrough album Working Class Dog. The album title is apt: Springfield struggled throughout the '70s as both a singer and actor, then suddenly hit it big in both endeavors in 1981. Just a month after Working Class Dog was released, he started appearing on the popular soap opera General Hospital as Dr. Noah Drake. This regular role was a big step up from the guest appearances he was getting on shows like The Incredible Hulk and CHiPs (where he played "guy at accident scene"). By August, his song "Jessie's Girl" was #1 in America and he was a heartthrob to legions of homemakers who watched him on General Hospital. He was in his 30s when this all happened and was able to appreciate his good fortune and even poke fun at it. The Working Class Dog album cover has a memorable cover photo of his dog Ronnie dressed like he's about to go to work at IBM. On the Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet cover, Ronnie is in a limo enjoying the high life with some poodles. Springfield is his valet.
  
  Springfield told Songfacts that if you look carefully, you'll see a cocaine spoon hanging from Ronnie's collar.
• There are a few lines of French in the lyrics:
  
  Fais l'amour avec moi (make love to me)
  
  Viens dormir, mon amour (come to sleep my love)
  
  Je t'aime donne moi ton coeur ce soir (I'd like you to give me your heart this night)
• On VH1's Behind The Music, Springfield said that he wrote this song at a time when he was in New York taping General Hospital episodes and doing concerts on the weekends.
• This song is a big crowd pleaser at Springfield's concerts, where he uses it to maximize audience participation. He asks everyone from security guards to little kids to sing the chorus. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Sabrina - Corvallis, OR, for above 2
• Thanks to his videos for "Jessie's Girl" and "I've Done Everything For You," Springfield was very popular on MTV, which launched in 1981, the same year Working Class Dog was released. The "Don't Talk To Strangers" video also did very well, giving the song a huge boost.
  
  Directed by Paul Justman, the video is a little goofy, with the kind of memorable images and comic bits that played very well on MTV. We see Springfield keeping tabs on his girl as she steps out; at one point he's under a table in a restaurant, rubbing her leg. Later, he creates a disturbance at the motel where she's having her tryst. One of those memorable images we were talking about is a flaming rotary phone, which probably didn't damage it - those things were indestructible.