The 1980s File Feature
Like To Get To Know You Well
Like To Get To Know You Well: Howard Jones and the Optimism of 1985The Synth-Pop Evangelist from High WycombeHoward Jones arrived in the early 1980s as a sol…
01 The Story
Like To Get To Know You Well: Howard Jones and the Optimism of 1985
The Synth-Pop Evangelist from High Wycombe
Howard Jones arrived in the early 1980s as a solo artist with a specific proposition: synthesizers could carry warmth as well as coldness, that pop music built on keyboards and drum machines could be full of genuine human feeling rather than clinical distance. His debut album Human's Lib had been a significant success in Britain in 1984, and his second album Dream Into Action pushed him further into the American market with a set of songs that balanced sonic ambition with melodic directness. Like to Get to Know You Well was among the most openly inviting things he had written, and it wore that openness without any trace of embarrassment.
A Song Built on Goodwill
The track carries an unusual energy for a pop record: genuine, unironic enthusiasm for other people. The production is characteristically Jones: layered synthesizers building a sound that is bright and forward-leaning without being aggressive. The vocal is warm and slightly earnest, entirely in keeping with Jones's public persona as one of pop's more philosophically minded and openly optimistic practitioners. In 1985, when cynicism was a fashionable posture, his refusal to adopt it was itself a kind of statement. The record is an argument by example that positivity does not require shallowness.
A Solid American Showing
The single entered the Billboard Hot 100 on September 28, 1985 at number 81 and climbed over the following weeks. By November 2, 1985, it had reached its peak position of number 49, completing a nine-week run on the chart. For a British synth-pop artist in the American market, the top 50 was a meaningful achievement; the landscape was competitive and radio programmers were selective. Jones had already demonstrated consistent crossover appeal with earlier singles, and this one confirmed that his audience in the United States was real and growing.
The Human Face of Electronic Pop
One of the tensions that ran through mid-1980s pop was the question of whether the dominance of synthesizers and electronic production had made the music colder, more impersonal. Jones was one of several artists who argued implicitly against that reading through every record they released. His music featured the instruments of the technological present while insisting on emotional transparency: the lyrics dealt with connection, growth, and human understanding; the performances were generous rather than detached. Like to Get to Know You Well is a concentrated example of that project, and the chart success it found suggests the argument resonated.
Part of a Productive Streak
Jones would continue releasing music and charting through the mid-1980s, with Dream Into Action producing several successful singles in both the UK and the United States. His career arc was less dramatic than some of his contemporaries, built on consistent quality and a stable artistic identity rather than sudden reinvention. That consistency served him well: he remained a credible presence on the circuit long after the synth-pop moment that had launched him had passed into nostalgia. Like to Get to Know You Well captures him at a productive midpoint, certain of his artistic direction and finding an audience willing to follow him there. The song's warmth is still palpable decades later.
Jones's approach to live performance reinforced the song's message in an interesting way. He performed solo for much of his early career, surrounded by synthesizers and sequencers, a one-man pop band who demonstrated by example that human warmth could coexist with electronic music rather than being driven out by it. Audiences who saw him live understood that the optimism was genuine, not a marketing position. Like to Get to Know You Well was the live set highlight precisely because it named the transaction that a Howard Jones concert was always trying to complete: genuine contact between a performer and a room full of strangers.
Play it with a clear head and let the earnestness wash over you; there are worse sensibilities to spend four minutes with than Howard Jones in full optimistic flight.
“Like To Get To Know You Well” — Howard Jones's singular moment on the 1980s charts.
02 Song Meaning
Like To Get To Know You Well: The Proposition of Genuine Curiosity
An Unusual Kind of Love Song
Like to Get to Know You Well is not a declaration of existing love or a lament over love lost. Its emotional territory is earlier and more tentative than either: the stage of genuine curiosity about another person, the desire to understand who they are before anything else is decided. That focus on discovery rather than possession is part of what distinguishes the song. Jones is describing the most generous impulse in human connection: the wish to know someone, fully and patiently, without demanding anything specific in return. That wish is rarer than it sounds.
Optimism as a Philosophical Position
Howard Jones in this period was publicly engaged with ideas about personal growth, spiritual exploration, and human potential; he brought that orientation into his music without preaching. The lyric of Like to Get to Know You Well expresses a view of other people as interesting rather than threatening, as sources of discovery rather than competition. That optimism was unusual in the context of a pop landscape that often coded emotional openness as naivety. Jones treated it as wisdom, and a significant portion of his audience agreed with him.
The Ethics of Attention
There is an ethical dimension to the song's central proposition. To say "I want to get to know you well" is to commit to paying attention, to taking another person seriously on their own terms rather than projecting onto them the version of themselves you have already decided they are. The lyric implicitly critiques the tendency to rush past genuine knowledge of each other, to treat intimacy as a destination rather than a process. It asks for slowness and real interest in a world that was already beginning to accelerate.
The Mid-1980s Search for Connection
By 1985, a sense of social fragmentation was becoming more evident in British and American cultural commentary. The individualism of the early Reagan and Thatcher years had produced prosperity for some and isolation for many; community bonds that had once been taken for granted were loosening. A pop song that celebrated the desire for genuine human connection responded to that anxiety directly. Jones was not writing political music in the conventional sense, but his celebration of curiosity and openness was a form of resistance to a colder social ethic.
Synth-Pop With an Open Heart
Part of what makes the song's meaning cohere is the relationship between its electronic production and its warm lyrical content. Synthesizers in the early 1980s were often used to signify the cold, the mechanical, the alienated. Jones consistently deployed them in service of exactly the opposite emotional message. The bright, keyboard-woven texture of the arrangement mirrors the openness of the lyric; the sound matches the sentiment. You hear a piece of music that is trying, at every level, to make contact with you.
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