Joe Jackson - Steppin' Out

This song is perfect. There isn’t one note I would change, alter, or tweak — nothing. “Steppin’ Out” feels elemental, like it always existed. Like it was shot out of the Big Bang and drifted through the cosmos until Joe Jackson picked up and put it out in 1982. That’s right, I’m being grandiose. But this song deserves all the grandiosity because this song is perfect.

It’s from Jackson’s Night and Day, and Apple Music’s write up of the album cites Cole Porter and Gershwin as influences for this sophisticated pop. I only really know Cole Porter from that Red, Hot and Blue all-star benefit album that came out in 1990 (in particular, U2’s cover of, appropriately enough, “Night and Day”). I get what Apple Music is going for, this is a sophisticated pop song. The gentleness, the refinement, the piano. It’s like a not-pretentious New Yorker Cartoon. You almost need a tuxedo with a silver cigarette carrying case in your breast pocket to listen to it.

Every part of this song comes together to form some kind of mega pop song Voltron. It has a sense of motion, of movement, of steppin’ out. It’s not really a song you can dance to, but you’re compelled to sing along with it. Even then, this isn’t the type of song you would belt out in front of the mirror into your hairbrush microphone back in 1982. You’re singing because the song is so elemental, like it’s a part of you. You’re singing along, because this song is perfect.

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