Big World

Big World is a 1986 live album of original songs by Joe Jackson. The album was recorded in front of an invited audience at the Roundabout Theatre in New York City on 22–25 January 1986. Jackson's intent was to capture the excitement and spontaneity of a live performance, but without any noise from the crowd. The audience remained silent during the recording as per Jackson's request, so we do not hear any applause. In the manner of a remote broadcast, the music was mixed live from microphones on each musical instrument and sent directly to a stereo digital tape recorder. Unlike most remote recordings, no post-recording mixing or overdubbing was performed.

The LP release was a double album, but only three sides had music. The unrecorded fourth side's label proclaims "there is no music on this side", and the record had a groove that quickly led to the inner so no damage could be done to the stylus if you accidentally placed that side on the turntable. The cd release contained the same 15 tracks on one disc.

The front cover of the album features the phrase "Big World" in French, Persian, Mandarin Chinese, Greek, Dutch, Korean, Thai, Russian, Irish Gaelic, Armenian, Hindi, Hebrew, Indonesian, Arabic and Polish. The back cover features the same phrase in Vietnamese, Swedish, Swiss German, Turkish, Spanish, Swahili, Italian, Danish, Finnish, Welsh and Hungarian.

The album included an eight-page booklet which included the lyrics to all fifteen songs and recording information in English, German, Japanese, French, Italian and Spanish.