Song of the Day 9/21: Joe Jackson, “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”

On a day filled with weird news, nothing topped the story of New York magazine suspending high-profile political reporter Olivia Nuzzi over her “personal relationship” with loonball nepo baby RFK Jr.. Jokes about his animal magnetism aside, what possessed her?

That’s the musical question Joe Jackson posed in his debut single back in 1978, and it gave him a reputation as an angry young man in the post-punk London vein that Elvis Costello and Graham Parker had already tapped. Most of his later music went in a jazzier direction, but his first LP, “Look Sharp!” remains a New Wave classic, as does its follow-up, “I’m the Man.”

“Is She Really Going Out With Him?” stalled on the charts when it was first released in the UK in the fall. It didn’t reach the charts until the following spring, when it debuted in the US and reached No. 21 on the Hot 100, spurring the album’s sales into the Top 20. That pattern has continued through Jackson’s career – most of his albums and singles have sold better stateside.