Great Songs from My Favorite Year in Music: 1985, Part 47

Level 42 - "Something About You"



(Single Release: September 1985)
There is just something incredibly nerdy about my love of Level 42, and in particular "Lessons in Love" and this 1985 single, "Something About You." But, looking back, it doesn't seem very likely that it was inevitable. This was likely about the time that my father started listening to modern jazz fusion. We, his kids, hated it. No, we don't want to listen to Spyro Gyra, the Yellowjackets, Rippingtons, or Fattburger, thank you very much. Granted, now I could possibly greatly appreciate those bands and actually do, but back then, they were square, pure L7, which is ironic considering that "square" was a term for people like me, who didn't appreciate jazz. Oh well. But, somehow the mainstream pop version of jazz fusion, embodied in Level 42, broke through. It wasn't necessarily because their name was derived from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, though that was certainly cool. After all, if the name had anything to do with it, I would have been way into another of my dad's bands, Shadowfax. No, it just had to do with great songwriting, Mark King's slap-bass stylings that provided a heavy groove, and the juxtaposition of King's lower register voice with keyboard player Mike Lindup's falsetto. All of these are evident in "Something About You," the band's second biggest single, behind the aforementioned "Lessons in Love." A new world of sophisticated, adult-alternative pop had opened up to me. I did not, however, dive in headlong to discover more. I was merely happy enough to enjoy Level 42's songs for the next two and a half decades.