Howard Jones’s “Like to Get to Know You Well”: The Olympic-Year Single

When Howard Jones released “Like to Get to Know You Well” in August 1984, the sleeve carried a dedication to the original spirit of the Olympic Games. The single came out as the 1984 Summer Olympics opened in Los Angeles. That timing explains much of its character. It is a song about friendliness across borders, and it was packaged as a gesture to an international event.

The song was written by Jones and produced by Rupert Hine. It was recorded in 1984 at Farmyard, the studio in Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire. WEA issued it in the UK. Its B-side was “Bounce Right Back”, and the official Jones discography lists the catalog number as HOW5.

A message of welcome

The song’s subject is openness: the wish to meet people, cross divides and build understanding between strangers. It is not a love song in the usual sense. The Olympic dedication on the sleeve signals what Jones had in mind, which was a spirit of friendly meeting rather than competition.

The 12-inch format pushed the idea further. The extended “international remix” has Jones singing in English, German and French. The official Jones site adds that certain copies of the sleeve carried different translations of the title on the front. For a synth-pop single, this was an unusually literal way to make the theme concrete.

Where it sits in the catalog

Jones had arrived in 1983 with “New Song” and “What Is Love?”. His debut album, Human’s Lib, reached number one on the UK Albums Chart in 1984. “Like to Get to Know You Well” followed “Pearl in the Shell” in the singles sequence, but it was not taken from that album. It appeared on the remix collection The 12″ Album in 1984. It was later added as a bonus track to CD versions of his second studio album, Dream into Action (1985). It is also on the US vinyl version of that album.

The song became one of Jones’s biggest British hits. It reached No. 4 on the UK singles chart and was certified Silver in the UK. It also charted in several other countries. It reached No. 16 in Australia and No. 8 in Sweden, according to the artist’s discography.

The US release and afterlife

The US release came in September 1985, on Elektra. By then Jones’s American profile was rising on the back of Dream into Action. The song reached No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985.

The song also reached the screen. It was featured in the 1985 John Cusack film Better Off Dead. Two separate music videos exist, one of them a US version.

Jones had ten top-40 hit singles on the UK chart between 1983 and 1986, and six of them reached the top 10. This song is among those six, alongside “What Is Love?”, “New Song” and “Things Can Only Get Better”. Its Olympic dedication and multilingual remix make it stand out as one of his most deliberately international records.

The sound

The single belongs to the synth-pop and new wave style that defined Jones’s early records. Hine’s production kept the arrangements bright and clean, and that suited a song built around welcome and friendliness. Placed beside the more reflective songs on Human’s Lib, this single is the sunnier, more outward-facing side of Jones’s early work.