IT'S BETTER THAN DRINKIN' ALONE: The Official ILM Track-by-Track BILLY JOEL Listening Thread

re: Manilow and jingles, I had no idea he actually did some of that! "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there" - wow. Another difference, as Attila reminds us, is that for all his wistful balladeering, Billy wants to ROCK, and to be thought of as a rocker. This too connects him with Lennon and McCartney much more than Manilow or most of the other archetypal singer-songwriters.

I had floated the idea of including Attila and the Hassles in this thread but ppl pointed out that they were distinct "things," and anyway we were looking at a lot of tracks on this thread. But I think ppl should check 'em out - we could do a short pause after CSH and just say "today is Attila Day," rather than going track by track... idk!

I mean I guess people can also just talk about it whenever, also! Just thinking in the spirit of dedicated group experience or w/e.

The ratio of "discussion of Attila as music" to "lol, that cover" is historically quite lopsided. Not that I want to be the person to correct the imbalance - just sayin.

"She's Got a Way" is gr8 btw

Woah, hadn't realized we had started this!

So, "She's Got a Way." The version I know is the Greatest Hits one, which is the Songs From the Attic one, and this is my first time hearing the CSH version. I've always found it decent but unexceptional, not to mention tonally jarring within the chronological ordering of GH, sandwiched between the more, uh, muscular 80s material.

Listening to the original for the first time, I can see why he went with a later version. The mixing on CSH really is disgusting and I imagine that it will make the next 9 days of this thread something of a slog.

There is a piece from Entertainment Weekly from around the time of River of Dreams where Billy offered brief commentary on all of his albums. I tried to dig it up, but I couldn't find it. Also, EW's website is the worst.

Basically, as I recall, Billy dismisses the record due to the mastering error, claiming that he can't ever listen to it. Having my first taste of it just now, I can see why.

Tuneful prettiness. Not bad.

affectations and fumbles and evident desire to be Paul McCartney and all

Listening to the Chipmunk version you linked above (only being familiar with the GH version before) and given the year, it strikes me that this is definitely his attempt at re-writing "Maybe I'm Amazed."

CSH is canon, but I can't help but always thinking of Piano Man as his first record.

Similar to Bowie.

(Just thought I'd beat the rest of you to writing out that last sentence.)

(see also: warren zevon)

ATTENTION! NATALIE MAINES IS NOT A LESBIAN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPxllU2WUak

I know singers have been tweaking lyrics to suit their gender/orientation for decades, but shifting it from first-person to third-person changes the context too much.

centuries

The song's vagueness--he likes this woman, but can't quite isolate her particular qualities--nicely mirrors my own ambiguous feelings towards it.

It's a vague sentiment, sure, but it's light-years better than "Always a Woman," in which the message is "she's a heinous bitch but I like her anyway."

i like this, nice little song

love the cover, i love how period it looks, like it could be some long forgotten "lost classic" reissued by Light in the Attic

though I'm pretty impressed, for a first song on a first album this feels very much like a "Billy Joel" song, like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something

new goal of this listening thread: to pinpoint the moment he loses his hopeful high voice

The vagueness also makes it one of VERY FEW love songs that a father could plausibly dedicate to a daughter and have it come off in a not-totally-creepy way.

This may venture into uber-maudlin TMI territory, but: the line "she's got a smile that heals me" does in fact make me think of my daughter. I know it's corny as hell but there it is.

no that's otm

and lovely <3

for a first song on a first album this feels very much like a "Billy Joel" song, like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something

haha. but i'm not sure he truly finds his "billy joel" voice until track 3 on this album.

his hopeful high voice

sounds like he's channelling paul mccartney via emitt rhodes, who at this particular point in time was making better billy joel records than billy joel was.

true!

I don't know if its the pitch issue, but his voice sounds more shaky than I expected. Starting from "Piano Man" on, his voice has a confidence that he never loses - I just figured he always had it. Interesting to hear, actually

i think he's trying to go for lilting & comes off as slightly petrified haha

yeah track three is KEY to joel's entire steez going forward, looking forward to that.

agreed about trying to sound lilting. ATTILA reminds us that he did already know how to sing in a more forceful and confident manner, so this here is as much a "poetic" affectation as his bellows over there are an attempt to find his "hard rock" voice.

"maybe i'm amazed" is a very apt comparison - and it, too, wasn't a hit until a live album years later! I picture joel watching it rise on the charts in 1976, clenching his fists, blood boiling at the CSH screwups all over again, and swearing that if HE ever gets big enough to merit a live album, he knows just what the single will be and won't THAT show 'em all? "your song" also probably had to be on somebody's mind, the label's if not the artist's.

like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something running down the road, trying to loosen its load....

i'm guessing this song's about the other member of attila's wife (later to be his own).

i'd always understood that the "mastering error" is because they wanted to cram too many minutes of music onto the album.

so many wives...

like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something running down the road, trying to loosen its load....

― pplains, Monday, July 17, 2017 12:41 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you know...for some reason it never occurred to me till this very second that the protagonist of "Take it Easy" was shitting his pants

i'd lump the eagles in with billy as a band who didn't achieve their full aesthetic and identity until track three of their debut album. chug all night y'all.

i'd always understood that the "mastering error" is because they wanted to cram too many minutes of music onto the album

I hadn't heard that specifically about CSH. But I have heard that "Silver Springs" was kept off Rumours partly because the resulting length would have mean that they could just BARELY fit it in only by narrowing the grooves and unacceptably compromising the bass response.

Tangent: Interesting to think about the degree to which actual physical limitations were relevant - all of this in living memory. Les Paul was faking multitracking by ping-ponging, then the Beatles were on four tracks, then eight, then DSotM, then Steely Dan's automated mixes, then ProTools... all of this has happened within the lifespan of specific known humans. The time from the Wright brother's first flight to walking on muthaflippin moon? Many of us have grandparents who lived through both.

agreed about trying to sound lilting. ATTILA reminds us that he did already know how to sing in a more forceful and confident manner, so this here is as much a "poetic" affectation as his bellows over there are an attempt to find his "hard rock" voice.

Ah gotcha. I ain't heard CSH yet, so I sure as hell ain't heard Attila yet

so....does someone want me to post the next song? We can't break the streak.

I thought "She's Got a Way" was today's song?

yeah i figured that too

let's not pre-empt the Doctor yet

...not a huge fan, but i recently was gifted MFSL flacs from his "classic" years. so i might become a convert during the span of this thread.

the TV show Preacher used Uptown Girl to somewhat amusing effect in a recent episode

Don't know/haven't seen, but The Simpsons owns classic use of that song.

Hey yeah, sorry, was waiting til tonight... I'm stoked that people are gnawing at the bit for this thread!

Our next track underwent some of the biggest alterations in the 1983 remix of Cold Spring Harbor, losing a full three minutes of running time - which, since we're dealing with track two here, seriously affects the pacing of the album. I'm sticking with a 'homemade' pitch-corrected version (credit to YouTuber TheZestanor). Bask in the sudden expansion of the arrangement: drums, searing guitar work, and some sweet sweet backing vocals. It's You Can Make Me Free:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkNdRLwRLGE

The truncated and otherwise altered 1983 remix can be heard here, as well as on Spotify, etc. The Chipmunk version does not appear to be online anywhere handy, but I think we'll all live without it.

I'm mostly familiar with BJ from The Stranger on, so listening to all these older albums is kind of a neat thing to finally get around to. I've already jumped ahead, of course, but I'm primed.

I'm digging this whole experiment - I own a lot of Joel records and know most of them backwards and forwards, but I also have huge gaps in that listening, and my copy of CSH for example is a Chipmunk edition so I've actually never taken the time to track down corrected versions and pay real attention to (some of) these songs.

wow mccartney much, bill? lol

also it kinda sounds like a guy walking through a sound stage while random people are playing instruments loudly to themselves

you can barely hear him over the piano at first & then when the guitar kicks in it's ok wtf is happening

like i think the guitarist may be playing to a different song than Joel & the drummer

hey man, they made him free

free to do what we wanna do

free to get loaded & to party

and not to keep time or play together really at all

i still kinda like it though

I dig it, but I'm such a Ram stan that I love the idea of someone getting that record day one, devouring it, and entering the studio two months later all keyed up to attempt one's own "Back Seat of My Car." Of course there are earlier McCartney precedents - "Another Day" had been out for a few months longer, and I sorta wish that amid his vocal outbursts at the end he tossed in "JUDE JUDY JUDY JUDY JUDY JUDY JU-DY WAIIIOW!" The backing vocals in particular are a lot closer to Linda's sandy overdubs than anything on Abbey Road, to my ears anyway. This is a really bizarre choice for the second track on a singer-songwriter album but maybe Billy or somebody wanted to make sure you got that he was a rocker, that this wasn't just going to be an album of "Your Song" type ballads.

yeah i think the devout mccarrtneyisms itt to me are what i like about it, as a mccartney fan myself

much more than "she's got a way," i'd say this is his "maybe i'm amazed" moment. or at least his attempt at that moment. it's catchy, but it ain't mccartney-catchy.

maybe the ending jam is a gift to any hassles or attila fans who were still hanging around. with some beatles ah-ah-aah harmonies on top of it just because.

Digging this experiment. I also came in with The Stranger. But, wow, You Can Make Me Free, not so great. Much more pastiche than BJ himself. The underlying song isn't that hot so he just added more and more stuff.

^ shit, wow, that's the first time I have noticed the intersection between those lyrics. I might need to lie down for a bit and process this information

is it time to turn the lights back on in this thread?

did i wait too long?

It kinda works for me except that the vocal doesn't sound like Billy at all somehow. If you told me it was an AI synthesis I would probably believe it and think it was mildly impressive.
I like that it's somewhat different to his previous stuff, and frankly it must have been pretty hard to break that long a silence (oddities notwithstanding).

yeah i wonder about that vocal too. it sounds like billy to me, but not 2024 billy

i don't hate it, but i think the arrangement sounds like AI too (i wouldn't have minded just piano, and i definitely wouldn't have minded billy's live band), and it really really could have used an actual chorus.

I like it, but man, it really reminds me of another song that I can't put my finger on.

Could have used an actual melody. I figure his voice must be Auto-Tuned to hell(?)

I like it, but man, it really reminds me of another song that I can't put my finger on.

End of the Road by Boyz II Men? Because that's what is somehow getting mixed up in my head.

I think his voice sounds like 2024 Billy, he sounds older here and of course the studio sands away the rough edges from live performances. did detect auto-tune as well which tends to 'youngify' voices.

The orchestra feels unnecessary, but then I realize we're talking about one of the last of the stadium acts. The piano dynamics would really stand out without all the backing.

Feels pre-Glass Houses in a good way. Maybe his first song without a "rock" band arrangement since then (though I'm not going back to the last few albums to check)?

since when did he use co-writers? I don't care, but it's striking.

I missed that there were co-writers (hadn't read about it until just now). Interesting that it involves the same guy who wrote Pussycat Dolls' legit-good "I Hate This Part." Guessing we'll hear at some point how this song was built.

my guess is the older you get, more time you spend on the toilet and sleeping, less time to write

I like it, but man, it really reminds me of another song that I can't put my finger on.

The changes and orchestration remind me of Chicago's "Hard to Say I'm Sorry"...

Which of the four of them wrote the line, "I see you now / As we're laying in the darkness"? Is the narrator wearing night-vision goggles(?)

Used the flashlight on his phone

It's his muse he can see in the darkness.

since when did he use co-writers?

i think this is more a case of the co-writers using him. if
i've got the story straight, they approached him, unsolicited, with an unfinished song and asked him to help top it off.

Hope they put bread in his jar

I think I thought it was "Only Time Will Tell" by Asia, but that's it's squirmier than that.

First impression: better than "Now and Then," but not exactly grabbing me. Hate what I'm hearing as auto-tuning, and the cheesy "arena drums plus strings" production. The actual song seems fine if not special - I could see it being a bit of a grower if it closed out an album, at the tail end of a mixed bag of pastiches on Side B.

yeah it’s a bit “Where’s the Orchestra” isn’t it

This damn song has been stuck in my head since the Grammys, and I’m not happy about it…

So apparently "Vienna" is having a moment? My 16-year-old daughter is working up a cover of it. It's not my favorite key but I will get there somehow.

i finally heard the new song & i like it well enough. enough to be interested in hearing more, anyway.

is Freddy Wexler any relation to Jerry Wexler? Freddy’s wikipedia entry starts at 2008 & eschews any real biographical info

BJ likes the disposable vapes apparently

So apparently "Vienna" is having a moment?

it's his tiktok hit!

It’s a good song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOf6CMbHPuA

Thru the ages

That was all right, but man, Billy. Don't give Elton any ideas.

i really really hate this guy and his music but ... i heard "Sleeping with the Television on" and didn't recognize it, so had to Shazam. really interesting to read everybody's thoughts on it here. i haven't listened to everything the man's made, but i agree this is a standout track, probably the best think i've ever heard from him. the rink organ is a shame but it's a pretty solid little power pop thing otherwise. can hear the comparisons to Joe Jackson but i think mostly it sounds like Squeeze in terms of the composition

killer song. my first karaoke performance coming out of the pandemic closure years!