Cancer

Album: Night And Day (1982)
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Songfacts®:

  • Even in 1982, sensationalistic media outlets were warning us about all the things that could go wrong with our health, while drug companies beguiled us with cures. In our 2012 interview with Joe Jackson, he explained: "I think I was kind of ahead of my time with that song. Because what I saw was a trend was starting then, and it's really become relentless now. Just a totally paranoid, fearful way of looking at health and risk and pleasure and so on. I think that song's more relevant now than it was then.

    Most of what you hear in the media about what's good and bad for you is bulls--t. I'm absolutely convinced of that. And if you actually delve into it a bit, do a little research, you see that the stuff that passes as science and news reports and so on is so unscientific. It's actually ridiculous. And it's not doing anyone any good. It's just making everyone more paranoid and stressed.

    It's a really weird thing that I've seen happen during my lifetime. We've gone from being quite a sort of hedonistic society in some ways to a very strangely uptight and puritanical one more and more. That's one of the reasons I'm living in Berlin, is because it's a lot less like that than New York is or London is, for that matter."

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