For years I heard a certain synth-pop nugget on the radio that featured the lyrics "You're only human after all," and assumed that it was the song "Human" by the Human League. Later I realized that "Human" is actually this song, and that the song I'd assumed was "Human" is actually called "Something About You," and was performed by a band called Level 42. Then, for a few years after that, I used to see the band names "Heaven 17" and "Haircut 100" in print and think, "Oh, those are the guys who did "Something About You"!
The point is: Level 42? Who the hell were Level 42?
Level 42 were the band that perfected the genre the '80s were hungry for, even if the '80s didn't know it yet: jazz-funk fusion.
Level 42 were like Chick Corea for soccer moms. Level 42 were like a Herbie Hancock burger with a helping of Tears for Fears sauce. While the rest of Britain's aspiring young musicians circa 1980 were gravitating toward the jagged, angular strains of new wave and post-punk, Mark King and Mike Lindup found their muse in ... instrumental jazz-funk fusion. But! The band soon discovered they possessed an extra asset that their other '80s jazz-funk fusion rivals lacked: vocal prowess. From Wikipedia:
Having considered recruiting a singer, the band eventually settled on giving King and Lindup the vocal role. The two men developed a complementary style, with Lindup's falsetto frequently used for harmonies and choruses while King's deep tenor led the verses (although Lindup would also sing entire songs on his own).
So the guy with the normal voice would do his thing, and then the guy with the funny high-pitched voice would come in and do his thing. This was Level 42's "shtick." This was their "gimmick." Hey, when it works, it works.
Honestly, I like Level 42 more than I like actual jazz fusion! I mean, Level 42 sang. They wrote lyrics. They composed pop songs. In the UK, they actually had hit singles, plural - twenty of them, in fact (but I'm not here to talk about those). In their home country, they were a jazz-funk fusion institution. In the US, they were the band who did that song that I thought was "Human" by the Human League.
The truth is, I'll bet even the Human League wished they'd been the band behind "Something About You," because, like "Don't You Want Me" before it, "Something About You" strikes me as one of those "perfect" British synth-pop singles. Nothing about "Something About You" would I alter in the slightest. It's got everything I need. Thumping dance beat. Continuous guitar riff on the right channel that sounds like a platypus wanking. Screeching guitar solo toward the fade-out. More hooks than a Peter Pan Broadway production's dressing room. Well, there's only one hook that really matters: it's the chord progression that kicks the song off and ultimately powers the chorus. Chord progressions like that are what the British synth-pop gods feast on, in vast mountain temples surrounded by bubbling cauldrons of virgins' blood. I'll take that chord progression any way they'll give it to me. I'll take it with a pile of descending "ooh"s. I'll take it with Mike Lindup swooping in like prime, pre-bedridden-in-a-bathrobe Brian Wilson as he belts out "Drawn into the stream of undefined illusion/Those diamond dreams, they can't disguise the truth." I'll take it with Mark King grunting his way through "Because there's something about you, baby, so right." I'll take it with a house. I'll take it with a mouse. The lyrics are, as far as I can tell, mainly romantic in nature, but with a vaguely philosophical and quasi-inspiring undertone? The verses are littered with unusual turns of phrase and bizarre imagery ("A love carved out of caring, fashioned by fate," "Fragile but free, we remain tender together," etc.), the line "We're only human after all" suggesting that the theme of the song is something along the lines of "Everybody plays the fool," but that doesn't quite jibe with the more nakedly positive statement that makes up the chorus and title. Who cares? Those hooks!
And yes, I know that "Something About You" charted in 1986, not 1988 (and was actually released in 1985), but for reasons unbeknownst to me, I feel like I didn't really hear the song on the radio until the Summer of '88. It seemed to linger in the air like exhaust from a red Corvette on a desert highway. I mean, you think I'd ever do a series called "Summer of '86"? What am I, crazy?
A long time back, the most popular YouTube result for "Something About You Video" used to be this clip from a French (?) television show, Super Platine, featuring the band performing in front of a black screen with a tacky white "tracer" effect hovering around their limber jazz-funk fusion frames. It was while watching this clip that I determined that Mike Lindup resembled Frankenstein's preppie Ivy League nephew. Nevertheless, my hunch that this was not the "proper" video proved to be correct.
Because the proper video is one of those genuine mid-'80s "mindfuck" videos that bears no relation to the song it's allegedly depicting and where the band must have stumbled into a meeting half-soused and told the director, "Look, here's the budget, just make it weird and incomprehensible and basically do whatever you want." Here, as far as I can gather, is the "plot": Mark King sits in a train compartment with his band mates, the video almost implying that they are strangers to him, and he begins to hallucinate that he is an evil vaudevillian clown-demon who is systematically destroying his other band mates' romantic relationships, which all happen to be with the same actress, and at the very end that same actress turns out to simply be some random stranger in the train station. I see.
Here is a noble attempt by one bold YouTube commentator to explain the various layers of meaning:
It's interesting that they would wrap this song with a video that deals with madness. The imagery and subtle body language of the characters tells the story of a young man on a train who is growing more agitated as the journey continues. The first thing we are shown is the "insanity" itself in the form of the very animated Clown figure who lives in a long hallway. When this figure appears, it serves as the surrogate to the young man as his visions of skewed relationships take shape. He periodically blurts out nonsensical words while sitting in the passenger car, much to the surprise and annoyance of the other passengers, eventually even needing to be restrained until he relaxes. As the journey progresses, he looks at the three young men sitting across from him (who are, in real life, the other members of Level 42) and, one at a time, imagines them in a relationship with a "dream" girl. You can see the young man furtively glance at the first one and then immediately start a dream sequence in which the Clown observes and reacts to a skewed moment of a relationship. The dreams are in color while reality is shown in black & white. This pattern continues with the other two passengers, each finding themselves uncomfortably the object of attention of the crazy young man sitting with them on the train while he imagines them with the Dream Girl. The Clown eventually gains full control in the young man's imagination, gleefully dancing until the madness swings to the other side of the spectrum and angrily lashes out at the dream girl. Fortunately for the other passengers, the train stops and the young man gets off, taking The Clown with him. But we also see the Dream Girl (still in color, and invisible to anyone else) ever-present in the young man's madness. Again, why they put this imagery with Something About You, I have no idea.
Make that two of us! I guess this video must exist on Level 42, and the rest of us are merely stuck on Level 41.
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