And when you mix me a drink up

You know you mix it too strong...

But honey look at your eyes

You got the innocent eyes

Always the innocent eyes

And now you're asking me why

I'm mad at you

MAD AT YOU!

And where the song would have ended on an earlier album, it instead breaks into a two-minute viciously danceable jam, and then Jackson's accusing, echoing voice returns amidst a barrage of percussion. In this mini-masterpiece everything that his pop promised, his reggae delivers with a vengeance.

As with I'm the Man, the songs on Beat Crazy form an almost unbroken whole; a tune hardly has the chance to fade before another sneaks in. He perfects his delivery on "One to One". The ballad begins with a single organ chord, grows into a piano piece on loss of individuality, and recedes to its original chord. Thus, without breaking his train of musical thought, Jackson draws us into his musical continuum.

The new, deeper style improves so much on the "old Joe Jackson" that his one left over from those days, "Pretty Boys," (also available on the Times Square soundtrack) falls flat. Even the theme is hackneyed: beautiful people succeed, uglies don't. He follows "Pretty Boys" with "Fit", a far superior attack on society's selectivity. In "Fit," he defends transsexuals and mulattos as examples of the individuals that 'free' society stigmatizes, and reassures the average citizen:

But don't cry--if the people in your street

Lead a life--that's more or less complete

Little problems every day, little problems go away

Kid yourself you're fighting for life