Howard Jones’ First US Top 40 Hit Established Him as a Promoter of Positivity

Some artists take a while to develop the sound and the sensibilities that will eventually define their careers. Others come out of the gate with all that stuff already fully under control, even on their very first offerings.

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The legendary British artist Howard Jones certainly belongs to the latter category. He immediately hit the Top 40 in the US with his first single. In so doing, he established what people could expect from him going forward.

Keeping Up with Jones

Howard Jones gravitated to the keyboards from the earliest days of his interest in music. He’d hang around music shops, toying with different organs before he finally had an instrument of his own. In the second half of the 70s, he was making his way with different bands and developing his skills.

As synthesizers came down in price in the early 80s, Jones was soon surrounding himself with different types of the instrument. That allowed him to go on stage surrounded by keyboards and create the effect of a full band playing. In fact, the only one joining him in those early shows was a mime named Jed Hoile, who bounced around the stage and into the audience to make it more of a multimedia experience.

Jones soon snagged a record deal. He made demos of his best material at home all by himself. The record company thought that a track called “New Song” would be perfect for the first single. He headed into the studio to record it with producer Colin Thurston, known for his work with Duran Duran.

Something “New”

Jones wrote “New Song” as both a message to himself and something that would resonate with other listeners. The first thing that you notice when you focus on the lyrics is their unwavering level of positivity and encouragement.

“I’ve been waiting for so long,” he sings to open the track and, essentially, his recording career. “To come here now and sing this song.” It had indeed been a multi-year journey for him to reach that point. But he came away from it anything but jaded.

Here was a guy bringing a song in front of the arbiters of pop music taste, openly admitting, “I don’t wanna be hip and cool.” Instead, he reaches out to his listeners to say that they, too, can achieve their dreams. “Don’t crack up,” he insists. “Bend your brain/See both sides/Throw off your mental chains.”

First of Many

Many of the acts that scored in the opening surge of the British New Wave took on an arch, ironic stance in their music. Howard Jones came out of the gate as the antithesis of that. Released in 1983, “New Song” went all the way to No. 3 in the UK and topped out at No. 27 in the US.

As listeners soon found out, the positive attitude espoused by the song was anything but a put-on. Future hits like “What Is Love?”, “Things Can Only Get Better”, and “Life In One Day” delivered similar levels of synth-driven optimism.

In other words, “New Song” not only gave us our first taste of Howard Jones. It also epitomized the goodness he’d offer going forward.

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