Joe Jackson – "Someone Up There" (1980)

The way you looked at me I knew

That we’d be coming to an end

It happened just by chance

I just spent an hour listening to snippets of Joe Jackson songs, trying to decide which one was most worthy of being chosen for the 2 OR 3 LINES “SILVER DECADE” HALL OF FAME.

I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed an hour more. I bought several Jackson LPs back in the early eighties, and listened to them a lot – but I never bought CDs of his albums or downloaded MP3s of his songs, so it’s been a long time since I’ve listened to his music.

Joe Jackson in 1980

What that hour taught me is that Joe Jackson may have been be the best songwriter of the “Silver Decade.”  I think Elvis Costello and Chrissie Hynde are worthy contenders for that title, but Jackson may have the edge when it comes to the sheer number of great songs he wrote.

Jackson’s body of work is remarkable for its stylistic range.  Whether you’re in the mood for an up-tempo, guitar-driven power-pop song or a haunting, piano-accompanied ballad, he delivers the goods.  

His lyrical versatility is also notable.  Jackson can pen pointed, sardonic lyrics that cut his targets down to size with the best of them, but what he really excels at are bittersweet songs – emphasis on the bitter, not the sweet – about relationships that don’t end well.

The singer in those songs – including today’s featured song – is never sure exactly what went wrong, but he knows there’s no fixing it.

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To say that it was difficult for me to choose one Jackson song for the newest 2 or 3 lines hall of fame is an understatement.

I would sample one of his songs and decide that it was the one worthy of being honored.  Then I would dip into another song and change my mind.  

I could see myself bouncing from song to song for days and still be uncertain of which one to pick.  So I decided to just stop where I was – which happened to be “Someone Up There” from Beat Crazy, Jackson’s third studio album:

Like many of Jackson’s songs, “Someone Up There” is essentially a short story with musical accompaniment.  

Its boy-meets-girl, boy-loses girl trajectory is nothing unusual.  What is unusual is that the narrator recognizes that there was no particular logic behind the couple falling in love and then breaking up – both “happened just by chance.”

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Click here to listen to “Someone Up There.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Joe Jackson – "It's Different for Girls" (1979)

What the hell is wrong with you tonight?

I can’t seem to say or do the right thing

Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello have a lot in common.  Both are British, and both are almost the same age – Costello is exactly two weeks younger.  

Both initially had success with new wave music before moving on to make more sophisticated, jazz-influenced records.  

And both are critically-acclaimed songwriters who have achieved only middling commercial success.

Joe Jackson in 1979

The biggest difference I see between them is that Costello is much more famous than Jackson – or, at least, that’s my perception.  (I can’t point to anything that definitively proves that, but I’m fairly confident that it’s true.)  

The music of both men got roughly the same amount of attention for the first decade or so of their careers.  But while Costello has remained in the public eye since then – he won an Academy Award for a song he co-wrote for Cold Mountain, composed orchestral works, and appeared in several American television series (including Sesame Street) – the records Jackson released over the past 25 years (with the exception of his newest, 2019’s Fool) haven’t gotten much notice. 

The bottom line is that I wouldn’t say that Costello is underrated as an artist.  But I don’t think Jackson has gotten his due.  

Jackson’s first few albums – Look Sharp!, I’m the Man, Beat Crazy, and Night and Day – are full of remarkable songs.  None of his contemporaries wrote better ones.  

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“It’s Different for Girls” – which was released in 1979 on Jackson’s I’m the Man album – was a #5 hit single in the UK, but failed to crack the top 100 in the U.S.

It’s a terribly sad song – as are “Breaking Us in Two,” and “One More Time,” and several other of my Joe Jackson favorites.

But even Jackson’s clever songs – and no one has ever written a more wickedly clever pop song than “Biology” – are terribly sad.

Click here to listen to “It’s Different for Girls.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Joe Jackson – "Sunday Papers" (1979)

You can read it

In the Sunday papers

When I was flipping through my Sunday Washington Post last week, the headline of the obituary of retired  diplomat Joseph Verner Reed Jr. caught my eye:

Noted diplomat and protocol guru made one memorable gaffe

Reed was descended from a man who came to America on the Mayflower — in other words, he was a true New England blueblood.  

Joseph Verner Reed Jr.

After graduating  from Deerfield Academy and Yale University, he became an assistant to the chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, David Rockefeller, who later described him as “a man of elegance, grace, wit, flamboyance and razor-sharp intellect.”

President Reagan appointed Reed ambassador to Morocco in 1981.  In 1985, he became Undersecretary General of the United Nations.

 In 1989, President Bush chose Reed, who was a lifelong friend, to be his Chief of Protocol.   

Reed with President Bush and 
Soviet President Gorbachev

A Chief of Protocol’s duties include arranging for official visits from foreign heads of states, accompanying the President on trips abroad, and serving as the liaison between the American government and the foreign diplomatic corps.  

From a 1989 New York Times article about Reed:

In his Savile Row suits, monogrammed shirts, pocket handkerchief and boutonniere, the tall, slim, ruddy-faced Mr. Reed is a cross between an old-line WASP and a Parisian dandy.  He wears white flannel pants on the tennis court as Bill Tilden did.  When he donned a Yale sweater and white bermudas to jog along the Via Veneto, even jaded Italians sitting at the Cafe Doney were distracted from their afternoon aperitivi.

For more than a decade, Mr. Reed has been handing out custom-made ballpoint pens engraved with his name, title and the American flag to everyone he meets.  He signs off his telephone conversations and handwritten notes with ''Aloha,'' because, he says: ''It is the only word in the English language that means, 'Hello, goodbye, I like you, and come again.''

Reed at the United Nations

He likes to drive guests around the family farm in a golf cart, showing off his rare botanical collection that he amassed with Mimi, his wife of 30 years.  It includes a Chinese scholar tree from the arboretum of Deng Xiaoping. . . .

In Mr. Reed's four years at the United Nations, he earned the nickname “Cuffs” for the way he discreetly shoots his cuffs so they properly frame his jacket sleeves.  The nickname stuck despite two burglaries from his suite at the Carlyle Hotel that deprived him of his $55,000 collection of cufflinks, studs and pocket watch. 

In other words, they don’t make them like Joe Reed any more.

So what was the “memorable gaffe” that the Washington Post headline writer chose to zero in on?

Queen Elizabeth – a/k/a "The Talking Hat"

It seems that when the height-challenged Queen Elizabeth II visited the White House in 1990, Reed and his staff neglected to provide a step for her to stand on when she addressed those who attended her arrival ceremony.  The result, Reed later told an interviewer, was that “all you could see was her hat bobbing up and down behind the microphones.”  

But the “talking hat” incident was not taken seriously by the five-foot-four British monarch, who joked about it years later at a dinner on the royal yacht that Reed attended.

How would you like it if the headline of your Washington Post obituary reduced your threescore and eighteen years on earth to a “memorable gaffe” and ignored everything else?

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“Sunday Papers” was released in 1979 on Joe Jackson’s debut album, Look Sharp.

I haven’t kept up with Jackson’s more recent recordings, but the songs on his first few albums were as smart as anyone’s.

Here are a couple of other noteworthy lines from “Sunday Papers”:

Well, I got nothing against the press

They wouldn't print it if it wasn't true

(Hahahahahahahahahaha!)

Here’s “Sunday Papers”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Joe Jackson -- "Breaking Us In Two" (1982)

Don't you feel like trying something new?

Don't you feel like breaking out

Or breaking us in two?

You don't do the things that I do

You want to do things I can't do

Always something breaking us in two

Are you surprised to see me posting on consecutive days instead of following my usual three-posts-a-week schedule?

Surely you haven't forgotten that 2 or 3 lines celebrates February -- the shortest and most depressing month of the year -- by doing "29 Posts in 28 Days"?  Actually, because it's a leap year, we're doing "29 Posts in 29 Days" this year.

Not a good movie

(You're very welcome -- but please stop clinging to my ankles and kissing my feet and shouting loud "Hosannas" . . . you're embarrassing me!)  

Yes, I know you don't deserve this much first-rate bloggery.  Most of you forget to read 2 or 3 lines unless I remind you, never respond to my solicitations of guest posts, and -- worst of all -- never click on my ads.  But I'll forgive you if you promise to do better in the future.

Joe Jackson

Does anyone listen to Joe Jackson's music any more?

Jackson is best known in the United States for his first single, "Is She Really Going Out With Him?"  He released two albums in 1979 (Look Sharp! and I'm the Man) and another one in 1980 (Beat Crazy) -- each one stronger than the one it succeeded.  

After recording Jumpin' Jive in 1981 -- it was a collection of covers of classic 1940's swing and "jump blues" songs originally performed by Cab Calloway, Louis Jordan and others of that ilk -- he released another album of original songs, Night and Day, the following year.

"Breaking Us In Two" is from that album, which made it to the top five in both the United States and the UK.  Jackson is a keyboard player, and his first three albums depended much less on guitars than most rock/pop records.  Night and Day doesn't use guitars at all -- the instrumentation is sort of Billy Joel-ish, but Jackson is a far superior songwriter.

Jackson is often compared to Elvis Costello (who is also English and only 14 days younger).  Both started out doing a clever and quirky brand of pop.  Their music seemed straightforward enough, although it was more sophisticated than it first appeared.  

Elvis Costello

But it was the words that made both Jackson's and Costello's songs memorable.  They wrote sad songs and happy songs and happy/sad songs, but their lyrics were consistently interesting and original.

Jackson and Costello each worked their way through a number of musical genres as their careers progressed.  Both released jazz albums and recorded with classical musicians.  I like their oldest albums the best, but I give them credit for not being content to recycle their early hits for 30 years like so many musicians from that era.  Elvis and Joe never got stuck in the oldies/classic-rock time warp.

I like Costello a lot, but I think Jackson's songs deserve just as much respect.  This is not one of my very favorite Jackson songs, but it's the obvious choice for today's post.  If you haven't figured out why that is, I'm sure it will all become clear to you in another day or two.

Here's "Breaking Us In Two."  (The music video is very dated looking and a little clichéd.  Focus on the music.)

Click here if you'd like to buy this song from Amazon: