If you were a veteran act who wanted to succeed in a commercial sense in the 80s, you had to bow somewhat to the decade’s musical whims. The best artists were able to update their sound without losing the identity that they’d already forged.
ZZ Top made drastic changes to their sound in the decade, including on the 1983 single “Sharp Dressed Man”. Although not a huge pop hit at the time, it helped clear the path for bigger singles to come. And it now stands as one of the Texas band’s signature songs.
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Synths Ahoy
ZZ Top carved out a niche for themselves by mixing traditional blues sounds with an element of funky boogie. That style served them well in the 70s. But to their credit, the band kept their ears open as they headed into the new decade.
In 1981, they released the album El Loco, which saw them tighten the arrangements a bit to cater to New Wave audiences. But that was nothing compared to the transformation that they underwent heading into the 1983 album Afterburner.
Billy Gibbons, the band’s lead singer and guitarist as well as their chief songwriter, started listening heavily to synth-pop bands of the early 80s, a la Depeche Mode. Along with engineers Linden Hudson and Terry Manning, he began to work on a sound that would incorporate his steamy guitar licks on top of this more modern backdrop. That style came to the fore on Afterburner, which included “Sharp Dressed Man”.
Look “Sharp”
Gibbons took inspiration for the song while watching the credits to a film and noticing that one character was listed as “Sharp Eyed Man.” That set him off in a lyrical sense. Meanwhile, he and his collaborators worked up a track with a whooshing synthetic rhythm. On top of that, Gibbons added both a killer main riff and a furious outro guitar solo.
“Sharp Dressed Man” also benefited from a video that featured a storyline that acted as a sequel to the clip from “Gimme All Your Lovin’”, the band’s previous single. Only a No. 56 pop hit, the song nonetheless helped continue ZZ Top’s hot streak on an album that was by far the biggest of their career to that point.
Behind the Lyrics of “Sharp Dressed Man”
The lyrics for “Sharp Dressed Man” follow a general pattern in the verses. Gibbons mentions a couple of luxury items of clothing or jewelry, and then follows it up with a flex of sorts. For example, he sings, “Them cufflinks, the stick pin.” And then he immediately comes back with “When I step out, I’m gonna do you in.”
We later find out that the narrator is all dressed up for a reason. “Lookin’ sharp, lookin’ for love,” Gibbons sings. The refrain promises that the surest way to romance is style. “They come runnin’ just as fast as they can,” he sings. “’Cause every girl crazy ‘bout a sharp-dressed man.”
As we mentioned, “Sharp Dressed Man” didn’t exactly light the pop charts on fire. But it paved the way for the follow-up single “Legs” to soar to the Top 10. And it proved that ZZ Top was wise to make an 80s-appropriate change in approach.
Photo by Aaron Rapoport/Corbis via Getty Images
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