Someone's Looking at You | |
Type: | single |
Artist: | The Boomtown Rats |
Album: | The Fine Art of Surfacing |
B-Side: | "When the Night Comes" |
Released: | 18 January 1980 (UK) |
Genre: | |
Length: | 4:27 |
Label: | Ensign Records (UK) Columbia Records (USA) |
Producer: | Robert John "Mutt" Lange[2] |
Prev Title: | Diamond Smiles |
Prev Year: | 1979 |
Next Title: | Banana Republic |
Next Year: | 1980 |
"Someone's Looking at You" was the third and final single from The Boomtown Rats' album The Fine Art of Surfacing.[3] It peaked at number two on the Irish Singles Chart and number 4 on the UK Singles Chart in February 1980.[4]
It is an organ-based song that paints a humid picture of 1984-style government surveillance and has been described as a "gently humorous song about paranoia".[5] The second verse starts "They saw me there in the square when I was shooting my mouth off about saving some fish. Now could that be construed as some radical's views or some liberals' wish". This refers to singer Bob Geldof's participation in a Greenpeace anti-whaling rally in London's Trafalgar Square.[5] Geldof's website describes the song as a personal statement on fame.[6]