Song Of The Day 2/4/2014: The Boomtown Rats - "Someone's Looking At You"

I wanted to include this song on last week's KPOP theme series, but strictly speaking it fell outside the date limits: the Boomtown Rats released The Fine Art of Surfacing in 1979, and KPOP Fest concentrated on 1982-84. I like the song a lot, though, and wanted to schlep it up here the first open date I could. This is the opening song on the album that contained the Rats' only renown song in the US which is, of course, "I Don't Like Mondays."

"Someone's Looking At You" is a rousing number about (this is conjecture) the uncomfortable detente between social conspiracy theorists and the urbane, jaded indifference of the disco world of the late '70s. The disco part is mine, I made that up. Most likely nobody in this song is going to any discos. But they're not going to any lame lectures or readings either. Bob Geldof's opening (and closing) line is one of my favorites: "On a night like this, I deserve to get kissed at least once or twice." But that's the last we hear of any romantic presumptions in this song, which makes sense, because no matter how attractive the person may be, jawing in a mentholated mind about the walls closing in doesn't exactly do the same thing that a Barry White song would. Kills the buzz. I personally don't think I could muster up a makeout session with a paranoiac. Maybe before now, when I used to be a lot more desperate.