Are you ready for a Tweetstorm [is that what they're called?] about Level 42 and, specifically, their 1985 hit 'Something About You'? 1/33 [no I'm not kidding]

Of all the artists I was obsessed with as a kid, few have gone on to accrue so little “cred” within the publications I’ve since written for as Level 42 – even Phil-era Genesis have enjoyed some critical rehabilitation of late. 2/33

This strikes me as hugely unfair, for myriad reasons I won’t get too deep into here. But as I was listening to and loving their album World Machine again this morning, I was struck by how – in addition to their skill as musicians and songwriters – 3/33

Level 42 were masters of contrast, of playing dissonant and contradictory elements against each other, and finding unlikely harmony. They didn’t foreground this, it wasn’t the goal of their project, but it’s often key to their greatness. 4/33

On the macro scale, there’s the irony of a band with fearsome fusion chops writing and recording chart hits that worked as brilliant pop and translated to mainstream radio and large international audiences. 5/33

[I understand this crossover caused friction within the group at the time, but the results of these contradictions speak for themselves.] 6/33

There’s a very pleasing tension in hearing a rhythm section of such virtuoso gifts champing at the bit but ultimately disciplining their showboating impulses in service of the song (but still gifting those songs a powerful, deceptive musical complexity). 7/33

‘Children Say’ off Running In The Family is a case in point – feather-light, effervescent pop, riding over tempo shifts that are tricky and mercurial, perhaps implicitly restating the song’s theme of still waters running deep. 8/33

Then there are the two distinct voices within the group, occasionally taking songs for their own but more often (and more pleasingly) playing off each other, sharing tracks and splitting different roles between them. 9/33

Mark King’s the gruffer and more traditional soul lead, complemented by Mike Lindup’s smoother, higher register and more androgynous vocals. 10/33

Even on their biggest hits and greatest songs, they’re playing with these and other dualities. Take ‘Something About You’, one of their early crossover smashes, their only US Top Ten single and, for me, the platonic ideal of blue-eyed soul/funk pop. 11/33

I wish I understood musical theory clearly enough to be able to explain how its confluence of chord changes affects me, in particular the shift from the verses to Lindup’s pre-chorus parts. 12/33

Lyrically, the chorus is banal to the point of laughable: “There’s something about you, baby, so right / And I couldn’t be without you, baby, tonight”. 13/33

But choruses don’t exist in a vacuum, and the verses of ‘Something About You’ gift its choruses with power. If the chorus is a simple statement of devotion, of praise, of “love” as simple lust or worship, the verses are more complex. 14/33

And more adult, too, again foreshadowing the theme of Children Say (and, indeed, much of the Running In The Family album). 15/33

The verses of ‘Something About You’ deal with the reality of love, the fragility of love, the obstacles relationships must often overcome. 16/33

Love, King sings, can be “carved out of caring, fashioned by fate”, but still “suffer so hard from the games played once too often”. “Making mistakes is a part of life’s imperfections,” King adds. 17/33

Real love isn’t like in the silly love songs, isn’t just passion and purity. The dream needs to negotiate the reality, and vice versa. That least-sexy and most unromantic of words, “compromise”, is essential to making a relationship work. 18/33

Compromising with your partner. Compromising your own dreams. Forgiving each other and yourself for mistakes made, for blemishes on the existential copybook. 19/33

This seems the theme of the verses, sculpting a portrait of actual love distinct from the romantic ideal – love less as flowers, chocolates and satin sheets, more as a day-to-day actuality, something more random and bound to laws of emotional physics. 20/33

King even acknowledges this comedown in the second verse, though he’s accepting of it. “A perfect dream of life, gone… We remain tender together / If not so in love / It’s not so wrong / We’re only human after all.” 21/33

Concrete, adult, mature stuff, and wise in its way. But… 22/33

But ‘Something About You’ isn’t just about the verses of compromises, or the choruses of fantastical devotion. It’s about the duality, about being two things at once, and both those things being true, even as they contradict each other. 23/33

The relationship isn’t “perfect” like those in silly love songs, but there’s something about the other person [baby] so right. Not so in love, but he wouldn’t be without her [baby] tonight. 24/33

And then there are Lindup’s parts, bridging the verses and the choruses, adding another wrinkle of depth, and just making the song utterly magical – a minor element elevating the whole to greatness. 25/33

Before the first chorus, Lindup sings of being “drawn into the stream of undefined illusions”, of “diamond dreams” – the unreal and unattainable fantasies of romance, perhaps. 26/33

Before the second chorus, Lindup sings of “changing years… add[ing] to your confusion” – the passage from youth to adulthood, perhaps, with all the compromise and negotiation with cold reality that entails. 27/33

Both bridges conclude on a “truth” that can’t be disguised, and given the verses’ theme of the complexity of love, we might safely assume that “truth” to be more of the literal disillusionment the verses deal in: the compromise, the reality. 28/33

But these bridges lead into the chorus, seemingly beamed in from another, more naïve, more trite, more shallow song. These bridges assert that the “truth” is that worship, that devotion, that glorious dream of love, at least as much as the compromise, the reality. 29/33

So ‘Something About You’ is a song that has its cake and eats it, both glossy candy-floss rom-com and something more grounded, more tangled, more bittersweet. It is both surface and substance, fantasy and truth, each facet in harmony with the other. 30/33

It is all these things at once, spinning in constant orbit at 45 revolutions per minute with enough irresistible melodic grace that all its lyrical duality and contradiction and dissonance make perfect sense, at least for the duration of its four minutes and twenty seconds. 31/33

And, like all great pop, it will repeat that magical track infinitely, every time you drag the needle back to the beginning. 32/33

That’s it. Those are the tweets. Buy more Level 42 records. And if the band are ever looking for an authorised biographer, I’m for hire. 33/33

33 tweets without mentioning HGTTG or Mark King's thumbs being insured for a million quid. Yes, I'm proud of myself.

I should probably have sorted this out before starting my first vaguely-viral tweet in years, but I've almost finished my new website and am always available for work, HMU https://www.steviechick.com/