Breaking Us In Two

This song is about the battle between the boredom of monogamy and the loneliness of independence. The singer wants his girlfriend/wife to seek interests outside of him; so, that his love for her will grow stronger. Jackson is clearly in denial over this relationship.

There are no guitars on this or any other song on the Night And Day album. Joe Jackson had a beef with rock music, which he felt was becoming commercialized and shallow, so he went out of his way to stay away from the format.

With the video for this song and "Steppin' Out," Jackson had a strong presence on MTV, which was just a year old and populated mostly by British artists like Jackson who had made videos to show in Europe. Jackson's videos were well-liked, but he often spoke out against the medium, as he felt it forced artists who were not visual performers to conform to a different role. "On the whole, most videos are pretty much an insult to people's intelligence," said Jackson.

He came to regret the remarks, saying in the book I Want My MTV: "I'm not such a miserable bastard that I won't admit that some videos are great fun. But I believed MTV was beginning to have a negative effect on music. I'm well aware that refusing to make videos accomplished nothing whatsoever except - how should I put this? - to make my next record less successful. It damaged my career and it never fully recovered."