It’s 3:30 a.m. on Friday night, and I’m doing a bit of a Billy Joel marathon on my Google Home. I grew up in the seventies and eighties, and Billy Joel was one of the top dogs. I’ve always loved his music,. You can say it’s cheesy, and you might be right, but it also just sounds freaking great. So he’s always going to be good in my book.
The first song I pop on is Piano Man, one of his all-time classics from 1973. It’s a slow-moving ballad about a piano player at a cocktail lounge on a Saturday night. It’s really a story of strivers that never quite made it, lost dreams, and lonely souls who gained support from each other’s presence.
They all call out to the piano man, because they want to be elevated and taken out of the malaise they’re in.
“Sing us a song you’re the piano man, sing us a song tonight, cuz we’re all in the mood for a melody, and you’ve got us feeling alright.”
And later, addressing Billy:
“He says Bill I believe this is killing me, as the smile ran away from his face, well I’m sure that I could be a movie star, if I could get out of this place.”
It’s a beautiful song, it really is. We all have dreams at one point, some of us fulfill them, and some of us don’t. But we all remember the feeling of yearning, and of dreaming, and Billy Joel captures it perfectly in piano man. Good job Billy.
The next song I pop on is New York State of Mind, from 1976. I was only two when this track was released, but I must have heard my older brother playing it for several years on the record player. I think it was also in radio rotation for many years.
“Some folks like to get away,
Take a holiday from the neighborhood
Hop a flight to Miami Beach or to Hollywood
But I’m takin’ a Greyhound on the Hudson River line
I’m in a New York state of mind”
And then the horns blare, sounds like sax and trumpet. Billy is talking about how he misses New York, and his longing to be in the heart of the beating City. He loves Chinatown, he loves Riverside, he’s just in a freaking New York state of mind. He’s all about the Big Apple baby. The horns flare out into the night, and it sounds just majestic and beautiful. Very classy, very kazzy, very New York, very hip and cool.
It’s a great song, and if you’re a New Yorker, it kind of feels like an anthem. You’re in your hometown state of mine, in a NYC State of Mind, and that’s all that matters. What a dope song.
The next song I pop on is River of Dreams, from 1993. This is a new, modern, updated Billy. It sounds like a poppy, bluesy, almost Disneyfied version of Billy Joel. I mean he still sounds good, and the beat is nice, but it’s just so wholesome and unchallenging.
You feel like he kind of sold out on this album, that’s what you really feel. Or maybe he’s just evolved into a less magnetic artist, who knows?
“In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep, from the mountains of faith, to a river so deep.”
This song pretty much does nothing for me. I don’t know if this is a coincidence or not, but this song was released when I was 19 years old, and I was already on my way to adulthood. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t resonate as much as his stuff from the late seventies and early eighties with me. Who knows?
Or maybe he did just really sell out, and thiis album sucks. In any case, it’s time to move on.
The next song I pop on is Allentown, from 1982. It’s from the album The Nylon Curtain, which was a mega album for Billy.
Allentown is a great song about a fading industrial city, the loss of manufacturing jobs, and the decline of unionism. It’s also about the fraying social contract that once allowed children to do better than their parents economically, but now has made it so that these same children struggle worse than their parents.
The video is incredible, and it shows Billy mining for coal in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a mining town. The song was released in 1982, when I was eight years old, and I remember being absolutely mesmerized by it. Billy with his safety goggles and all the machinery being moved around, it was just spectacular. I’m not saying I wanted to be a miner, but I was lost and immersed in that world, and it’s just seemed so noble and purposeful. That’s what Allentown is all about, nobility and purpose and how it’s been stripped away from our nation’s former manufacturing workers.
So that was a great song. I take a chill for a couple minutes and take a couple sips of Jameson and diet ginger ale, and look out the kitchen window at the night sky, which is dark but pretty clear. I can see the North Star, and that makes me feel good. It’s 4:12 a.m., but I woke up so late today that I’m not even tired. I figure I’ll put on one or two more Billy Joel songs, then knock out some genxchronicle posts, and maybe make an egg sandwich before I go to bed. All in all a normal night, a blogger’s night, a digital night. Life in 2018, is what it is.
For my last Billy Joel song, I say screw it to trying to listen to his later 80’s and 90’s work, which is pretty much crap, and I pop on Moving Out, from 1977. It’s a classic song about a teenager finally becoming a man, and separating from his parents. It’s a universal theme that we can all relate to.
“Anthony works in the grocery store, saving his pennies for someday, Momma Leone left a note on the door, she said Sonny move out to the country.”
And later:
“It seems such a waste of time, if that’s what it’s all about, Mama if that’s movin up, then I’m movin out”
It’s another strivers tail, is what it is, as Anthony sets off on his own in the world. We don’t know if he’ll make it, or if he’ll crash and burn like most people do. But we’re rooting for him, at least a little bit. Because we’ve been there, and we’ve had dreams ourselves, we know what it means to try and achieve something. So we wait for Anthony, we chill to the song, and we just kick back and relax.
So that’s my survey of Billy Joel on a late Friday night. He was one of the formative artist of my youth, and he still has a special place in my heart. Thank you Billy for the music and memories you provided me with. Keep doing what you do.
