Context, people, context! This is Joe Jackson, one of the post-punk rebels alongside Elvis Costello. So, there's no ethereal life/death themes, instead firmly rooted in working class themes. Yet, while Costello preferred to moreso dwell on the injustices back home, Jackson set sail for New York City and tell more populist tales. A (too?) young couple strained by argument and tears are tired and prematurely aging, so, says hubby, let's just go out, somewhere, whereever, anywhere that isn't the uninspired nightly ritual of the tellie or the radio. Into the city lights, where anything can happen.
This is one of the most hopeful, optimistic songs on record, imho, and helped mark the beginning of the early eighties New Wave ("dress in pink and blue"), Reagan-dominated ("anything's possible") era which was such a marked difference to a near-decade of the grey, despondant, economically-challenged late 70s, which gave birth to disco, the antithesis of the times.
Context, people, context! This is Joe Jackson, one of the post-punk rebels alongside Elvis Costello. So, there's no ethereal life/death themes, instead firmly rooted in working class themes. Yet, while Costello preferred to moreso dwell on the injustices back home, Jackson set sail for New York City and tell more populist tales. A (too?) young couple strained by argument and tears are tired and prematurely aging, so, says hubby, let's just go out, somewhere, whereever, anywhere that isn't the uninspired nightly ritual of the tellie or the radio. Into the city lights, where anything can happen.
This is one of the most hopeful, optimistic songs on record, imho, and helped mark the beginning of the early eighties New Wave ("dress in pink and blue"), Reagan-dominated ("anything's possible") era which was such a marked difference to a near-decade of the grey, despondant, economically-challenged late 70s, which gave birth to disco, the antithesis of the times.