From 1979. The second single released by the then 25-year-old Joe Jackson, one of the new singer-songwriters whom some record company bosses (in this case A&M Records) believed had a way with words and tunes that could harness the energy of this new wave stuff that was taking hold of the youth’s attention.
mp3: Joe Jackson – Sunday Papers
It’s quite likely that this song would either get banned or, more likely, result in Joe having to come with a re-write to enable airplay. Indeed, it’s very likely that if he was sitting down today to try and come up with the songs, then he would likely have refrained from the opening couplet:-
Mother doesn’t go out any more
Just sits at home and rolls her spastic eyes
Otherwise, the song certainly details an awful lot of what was wrong with British society back in those days, when a number of Sunday newspapers would sell in their millions thanks to their obsession with scandals, crime and sensationalism, very often not caring if what was being printed was the truth. Some of the worst offenders may have gone by the wayside since 1979, but nothing much has changed, and indeed with the frightening and unregulated growth of social media, things have become a lot worse and frightening.
Spastic was a common word back in the late 70s – there was even a UK charity called Spastics Society which raised a fair amount of money and did a great deal to try and change attitudes towards people living with disabilities. But all too often, the word was shortened to ‘spaz’ and used as a derogatory and offensive term. The Collins Dictionary now defines spastic to mean ‘an old-fashioned and offensive name for a person who has cerebral palsy’.
The Spastics Society changed its name in 1994 to SCOPE, marking what should have been the final stage of making the word totally unacceptable in everyday language.
Joe Jackson had long recognised the need to amend the lyric. Indeed, he did so just a few years after the song had been recorded.
I don’t wanna go out any more
I read the news, I can’t believe my eyes
Indeed, the entire lyrics of the song had been changed beyond recognition, possibly for his American audiences whose knowledge of the UK tabloid newspaper industry would have been scant.
mp3: Joe Jackson – Sunday Papers (live)
As captured on the Body and Soul tour when he went on the road with a swing band, and later included on the album Joe Jackson Live 80/86.
The b-side of the 7″, which was a flop in the UK, was the title song from the debut album:-
mp3: Joe Jackson – Look Sharp
At the time, back in ’79, I didn’t really get the Joe Jackson/Elvis Costello comparisons that many critics were making. As time has gone by, I really hear it now.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
I never took to Mr Jackson but that cover art is fantastic.
Flimflamfan
We Yanks did, in fact, pick up on the nature of the UK tabloid press because our own is equally sordid. I did NOT know that spastic wasn’t meant to be insulting–it was definitely a derogatory term to us. But I love this song and the whole album, particularly the powerful bass work of Graham Maby. Another solid stone in the musical monument that was 1979.
In actual fact, if you check yer dictionary, the word ‘spastic’ in this context is not really pejorative since it is a medical term that describes a type of muscular or motor weakness or abnormal operation. Thus Mrs Jackson’s eyes are demonstrating muscular spasticity. It’s pejorative when used to describe a whole person, reducing their entire being to the effect of their medical condition, but here it’s only his mother’s malfunctioning eyes that are described. A perfectly useful word rendered unusable by its misuse.