My Top 1000 Songs #166: So It Goes

The title of Nick Lowe's 1978 debut, Jesus of Cool, was presumably deemed too risky for American audiences (remember what happened to John Lennon?); so for our genteel tastes, it was re-monikered Pure Pop For Now People. Which, c'mon, is still a perfectly fine title, and perhaps even more appropriate given the record's contents. Breaking from the R&B-flavored pub rock and Americana of his Brinsley Schwarz days, the album was littered with quirky, clever power pop, picking up on the vibe of the atypically hook-based Brinsley tune "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding." 

Most emblematic of Lowe's new sound was "So It Goes" (originally released as a 1976 single), a delightfully absurdist yet relentlessly jovial pop tune that arguably laid a lot of the groundwork for the skinny-tie power pop of the new wave era. It's one of those songs that, when I first heard it a few years later, reminded me of the silly pop songs that first hooked me on Top 40 radio, yet inherently cooler and much less embarrassing. It felt almost like the Bay City Rollers (a band to whom Lowe had paid partially-tongue-in-cheek homage on another track), but the sort of thing you could freely blast without rolling up the windows.

This is the slightly more polished version of the song I know from my version of the Pure Pop cassette I picked up at the mall back in high school.

Once more, live in '78: