Is She Really Going Out With Him?
For some reason, my dad picked Joe Jackson’s 1979 album, Look Sharp!, for Dad-Rock Tuesday this week. Don’t ask me why.
It’s never a good thing when I start zoning out during an album. When the statuses of my moronic friends on Facebook, and their ever-increasing misuse of the hash tag become more interesting then what I’m listening to, well, #yrdoingitwrong.
Joe Jackson maintained my attention at first. One More Time is a pretty catchy song. After that, though, mainly when Is She Really Going Out With Him? came on, any interest that I had faded completely. I cannot stand that song.
I should love this record. I mean, it ends in an exclamation point, and there’s not much that I love more than unconventional punctuation. Not even an unexpected sentence-ender could save this record for me, though.
If you couldn’t tell from the short, choppy paragraphs, I’m struggling with this. I just checked my word count, and I still have 100 words to go before I reach the target of 250. Well, make that 80 with that last sentence. Down to 72 now. Yes. #progress.
So now all I have left to write about is the music. If you’re one of my three regular readers, you’ll know by now that I’m not very good at that. So my only hope is that I can use enough words before I really have to do that. I mean, I’m getting pretty close. 250 isn’t that many when it comes to words.
Swole Ear 
Your pappy clearly has exquisite taste and it must not be genetic. Even Jack White appreciates this album as is demonstrated by his borrowing of Is She Really Going Out With Him? for the Raconteurs’ Steady as She Goes. Listen to them back to back and you will see.
Tsk. Tsk. I know you may hate to hear that you are too young, but in this case, you’re too young. Joe Jackson’s angry music will appeal to you much more when you are a college freshman and all the freshman women act like you have the plague. they’ll come around after a year or two, but for that first year, when you see them all running after idiot upper classmen, but until that time, “Is She Really Going out with Him” will come close to anthem status. I recommend that you listen again in two years and see if your attitude toward Joe changes at all. Also, give another listen to Happy Loving Couples and Pretty Girls. There’s no way that your Dad and I are both wrong about this album — we’ll wait for you…
Really? “Is She Really Going Out with Him” approaches anthem status for college freshmen boys?
Your dad probably picked this Joe Jackson album at least partly because he still has nightmares from when your uncles taunted him with “Five Little Guys Named Mo” from Joe Jackson’s Jumpin Jive.