Woman’s World

A-Side: Woman’s World
B-Side: Dumb Blonde

Record label: Island WIP 6531
Producer: Simon Humphrey

Released: 11/01/80

“It’s a woman’s world but a woman don’t think straight,” croon famed Elvis clones. A statement which will cause much consternation among both scholars of the English language and feminism. Again, it’s as you would expect from The Jags, a competent MOR rock single that could scrape in to the thrifty fifty. (Record Mirror, 19/01/80)

One doesn’t wish to be nasty to The Jags, since they lent me an AC30 once when I needed it desperately . . . . but you remember all that stuff about how “Back Of My Hand” wasn’t meant to sound like Elvis Costello at all and the whole thing was a ghastly accident? Don’t look now, but it’s happened again. To sound like Elvis is merely bad luck, but to do it twice is – in the words of Lady Bracknell – sheer carelessness. (NME, 26/01/80)

Take a big dollop of Costello, add a pinch of Geldof and stir it all into an uptempo reggae-fied pop recipe with an easy to digest chorus and we’re talking hitsville Arizona again for Island’s answer to Mike Yarwood. Elvis’s army is here to stay, but I would rather have the paranoid android than these dozy bozos any day. (Sounds, 19/01/80)