Debutante Darlings: Joe Jackson - 'Look Sharp'

Not one, but two great records to begin a career, and all in the same year.

Joe Jackson released his two best albums at the very beginning of his long and storied career. Delivered as a sonic one-two punch, Jackson’s debut Look Sharp and its immediate follow-up, I’m The Man were released within just nine months of one another. Most artists would be thrilled to release a record as good as just one of this pair of stellar albums. Jackson not only managed to make both of them, he managed to do it within one calendar year.

David Ian “Joe” Jackson’s first gig was playing piano in local bars around his Staffordshire home as early as age 16, before he was awarded a scholarship to study musical composition at the Royal Academy of Music. Jackson’s bandmates in his first band, Edward Bear christened him with the nickname Joe, as he reminded them of a puppet from British TV named Joe 90. The moniker stuck.

Jackson began touring under the name Koffee ‘n’ Kream in 1977 and began work on their debut LP. Working at a small studio in Portsmouth, the band recorded many of the …