Joe Jackson

Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond · Jun 30, 2026 · 1h 11m · transcript

Joe Jackson showed up in the late '70s UK New Wave scene, all nervous energy and biting wit, with hits like "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" putting him in the same conversation as Elvis Costello and Squeeze. But where a lot of his peers stayed in their lane musically, Jackson kept moving: into the jump-blues swing of "Jumpin' Jive," into the sophisticated, Latin-tinged jazz of Night and Day, and then into classical composition, into a music-hall concept album framed around a fictional Edwardian performer named Max Champion. He's rarely made the same record twice, and that restlessness has…