Many artists reinvented themselves quickly after first gaining fame during the initial burst of punk and new wave. Loud, brash, and edgy got you in the door even if loud brash and edgy weren’t what you wanted to be.

Sometimes you have to subvert your own musical inclinations in order to fit with the times, but once established, you can shed the shackles of expectation and let your true self run free.

After playing the violin for a couple of years, Joe Jackson took up the piano as a young teen in Portsmouth, England. As an old teen, he showed enough talent to receive acceptance from London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied piano (of course), percussion, and composition, and in his spare time played in pubs and cabarets to earn a little extra money.

By the late 70s he’d formed a band and scored a record deal with A&M. Strangely, despite his history and talent, Jackson’s first three albums feature almost no piano whatsoever. The instrument appears fleetingly on a handful of songs, but only as an extra musical color, never the centerpiece. Meanwhile, the electric guitar and bass are placed high in the mix and in your face.

Elton John and Billy Joel both had established bands with loud, rock and roll guitar and prominent piano, so there was precedence for success, but for some reason Jackson chose to downplay his chosen instrument.

By early 1982, the band was no more and Jackson found himself living in New York with a drum machine and a plethora of keyboards. He fell in love with the city and decided to write about what it felt like to go out for the evening, the bright lights and the rush of excitement. He titled his new song “Steppin’ Out,” and when it came time to record the track, played all the instruments himself except for the live drums.

Keyboards kick in immediately, and then more keyboards — Joe is not messing around this time.

On the subsequent album, Night And Day, Jackson is credited with playing acoustic piano, electric piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammond organ, GEM organ, and Prophet-5 and Minimoog synthesizers. When he returned to tickling the ivories, he tickled alllll the ivories.

Night And Day would be the biggest album of his career, and “Steppin’ Out,” released as a single in the fall of 1982, his biggest hit, tripping the light fantastic into the Top 10 in both the US and the UK.

So leave the TV and the radio behind… with Joe Jackson.