A man whose days run backwards — up in the evening, home by morning — is asking to be recruited. This gun's for hire: any action, any ignition, since the alternative is the mirror and the wish to change his clothes, his hair, his face. What the song leaves standing isn't heartbreak but inertia, the shame of sitting around getting older while something is happening somewhere and he isn't in it. He even names the blockage — sick of sitting around, unable to finish his book — and flips the town's advice to stay hungry into a joke, because he's starving tonight. The chorus is a want ad: you can't start a fire without a spark, and he's taking applications.

The famous hook is a concession, not a boast. Even if we're just dancing in the dark — that just admits the dance may be a stand-in, motion offered where a changed life was wanted. The record bets the stand-in will do: from first beat to fade the groove keeps a near-metronomic grip on the body, a song about paralysis that makes sitting still impossible, and it doesn't end so much as recede, refrain still turning.