Exhibit A on what I said earlier about Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp! It’s the official concept album for disgruntled singles. Maybe it wasn’t intended as a concept album, but it came out that way, because every track is about romantic dissatisfaction. Jackson must have got burned hard if that’s all he could write about. He must have written some normal love songs since then, but I can’t think of a single one right now. This is somebody with a pretty cynical view on relationships. Something I can relate to, as of, oh I don’t know, the past three years. Happy Loving Couples is the perfect song for that mindset. Everybody’s writing about how beautiful love is, and yeah, love is nice, but you know what, people in love are irritating and gross, if you happen to be not them. And yeah, I have been one of those horrible people. I know they do it on purpose to piss everyone off, too. It makes regular non-smitten people jealous to see gratuitous public displays of affection, which is precisely why it’s so annoying. The jealousy and irritation comes along more often that the sappy love does, unfortunately. But that reality doesn’t get documented very much by singer/songwriter/pop star types. Then thank god for Joe Jackson and his angry single dude persona.
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