The year is 1979, and punk has turned Elvis Presley's curled lip into a defiant scowl. The effect on the mainstream is remarkable, a fresh breed of pasty British pop stars adopting an audible sneer and a generalised air of disgruntlement.
Alongside Elvis Costello, the New Wave Buddy Holly, and Graham Parker, the sharp-tongued pub-rocker, Joe Jackson appears positively suave by comparison. His neat suits and receding hairline paint him as a Jack the lad, but he's actually journeyman pianist and jazz crooner with a certificate from London's Royal Academy in his back pocket.
Jackson's debut album for A&M Records is Look Sharp!, an 11-track collection of taut, raw and simple New Wave and cod-reggae rockers that delivered the Top 20 single Is She Really Going Out With Him?
The song speaks to every jilted lover trying to bury his seething resentment, but an increasingly agitated Jackson isn't just peeved at his usurper; he's peeved at that type of guy. The "gorilla".
Girls and girl trouble dominate a string of catchy, nervy tunes. Happy Loving Couples and Fools In Love ("Are there any creatures more pathetic?") spell out Jackson's position on intimacy in bold italics.
But Jackson's jaded view of humanity isn't limited to romantic entanglements. After the chopping guitar riff of One More Time gets proceedings off to an enervating start, Sunday Papers finds the singer lamenting the lazy thinking that leads to a mundane existence, a theme he touches on again in full-tilt rocker Throw It Away.
The title track finds Jackson again fighting a war in his head against members of his own gender, the "big shot" types whom he will one day get the better of.
Jackson's spiv-rock would be sharpened further on I'm The Man, released the same year, before the jazz man he had always been would surface in albums Beat Crazy, Jumpin' Jive and the excellent Night And Day.
