“Sunday Papers” by Joe Jackson

"Sunday Papers" sits on Look Sharp!, Joe Jackson's 1979 debut, and it's a sneer aimed at the British tabloids, set to a reggae-tinged groove. Jackson, never a friend of the press, wrote it about the trash and half-truths the papers peddle, picturing a reader who lives on nothing but that diet until his brain turns to mush; he'd later hold it up as a sample of the sarcasm in his lyrics of the time.

Graham Maby's bass, Gary Sanford's guitar and David Houghton's drums back him, with David Kershenbaum producing and Rod Hewison engineering. Released in Britain as the follow-up single to "Is She Really Going Out with Him?", it missed the charts, though critics have generally been kind to it. Onstage Jackson would pull out a newspaper before the song and read the headlines aloud in his most withering voice.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.