I don't remember exactly if it was me or my sister Ruth that bought "Working Class Dog," but I definitely listened to it the most, so it was probably me. And it was probably because of "Jessie's Girl."
See, I had a number of crushes on a number of girls, but they all had boyfriends--none of which were my friends, so it was really easy to hate them. And "Jessie's Girl," more than any other song of the 1981-82 school year, best expressed the frustration and disappointment and jealousy and anger and sadness and desperation and loneliness and awkwardness and longing and placing of the hands in coat pockets and dancing with the left hand in a pants pocket and face washing and self-examination in the mirror and playing the guitar in the bathroom while looking in the mirror and repeated smashing of said mirror with a guitar that inevitably arises from such situations. I mean, what teenage boy in the early 80s didn't go through all that?
The album was actually pretty good with several other chart-topping hits like "Love Is Alright Tonite" and "I've Done Everything For You." It also had some real stinkers like "Easy to Cry" and "Inside Sylvia"--the song with the record for the number of times anyone has sung the name "Silvia "(39).
To this day, whenever I hear "Jessie's Girl" on the radio, I sing along and think about all the girls I liked when I was a sophomore (none of which were named Silvia) and how much I hated their boyfriends (most of which were named Cory Barnes).
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