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

i think "roberta" may be the first great billy joel song, his first perfect marriage of lyric, melody and performance. love love love this one. the sad sack looking for love at the strip club (or the escort ads, or wherever) could be just another way for billy to express his self-loathing and/or woman-loathing and/or all-around bitterness, but that's not what he does here. "roberta" is sympathetic to both the narrator and the object of his affection, and there's a newfound ease in the vocal performance that sells both ends of that. a lot of what we've heard so far is a singer who hasn't quite grown into his voice yet, or who's trying a little too hard. here, finally, he's just singing. and it's a really sweet melody, which the "i'm in a bad way" bridge takes up a notch. A-plus.

it's quite possible he stole the intro to "roberta" from this 1971 neil diamond classic:

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

Hey y'all, I don't quite have it in me today to make the next post, given the state of things out there. Should return tomorrow though.

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

The Entertainer opens side two and brings back the Moog with a vengeance for what always feels like the album's centerpiece or keystone track to me. The sole single, released a month after the LP, it peaked at #34 on the Hot 100, getting to #30 on Easy Listening and the Canadian charts both. This makes it one of the bigger hits left off of Greatest Hits Vol. I & II in its original release (it was added to the CD version). Ironically, given the lyric, the recording was cut down from 3:41 to 3:11 for the single, screwing up the instrumental buildup. The printed label invokes a third running time as a cheeky punchline.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2e/Entertainer.jpg

http://streamd.hitparade.ch/cdimages/billy_joel-the_entertainer_s.jpg

http://images.45cat.com/billy-joel-the-entertainer-columbia.jpg

Continuing the line of country covers of Joel tunes, Waylon Jennings substantially re-interpreted it as an album-closer for 1984's Never Could Toe The Mark. The Internet suggests that an Australian mime (?) named "Reg Livermore" may have also attempted it, but it's possible The Entertainer was simply the title of one of his albums.

He featured "The Entertainer" this past weekend at Wrigley Field, btw:

Set List:
Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)
Pressure
Go Cubs Go [cover of Steve Goodman]
The Entertainer
Vienna
The Lion Sleeps Tonight [cover of Solomon Linda]
The Longest Time
Your Song [cover of Elton John]
Zanzibar
A Day in the Life [cover of The Beatles]
Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)
The Downeaster Alexa
New York State of Mind
25 or 6 to 4 [cover of Chicago]
Allentown
Sometimes A Fantasy
She’s Always A Woman
Don’t Ask Me Why
My Life
The River of Dreams / A Hard Day’s Night [cover of The Beatles]
Nessun Dorma [cover of Giacomo Puccini, sung by Mike DelGuidice]
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
Piano Man

holy shit "roberta" is super good

real talk: i've never liked The Entertainer
that crazy Moog riff is like knives in my brain

Also re: "The Entertainer": This pre-album version, with no Moog and different lyrics opens with a little run through Joplin's rag of the same name, a trick which he's apparently kept alive in recent performances. The profoundly uninspired rhythm section gives some hint of why he might have been looking around for a tighter touring ensemble around the time of this album. This 1977 live performance, in turn, adds a few flourishes and a mysteriously long intro, maybe there to give Billy some knob-twiddling time on the Moog. In my fantasy two-disc version of Songs in the Attic, this song is a must-have.

haha, I'm a sucker for really bubblegummy/AM-goldy uses of synths in this era - Moroder/Chicory Tip's "Son of My Father," stuff like that. I didn't hear this song until I got the album as an adult and it seemed such a fresh surprise. If all the tracks here were as peppy and sunshiney, or at least as hooky, this would be a classic record IMHO. Wonder if the label under-promoted the album as a slap on the wrist for the snarky lyric, or if they just didn't think there were any other hits here.

The Moog is a bit shrill at times, yes, but I love everything else about this song. It initially feels like something that should have come from later in his career in terms of its cynicism; for all I know, he'd had enough bad industry experiences to justify the tone, but he's clearly playing a character of a music biz vet (would this have been too early to be referencing Elvis in Vegas?). I love how the lyric "It took me years to write it / they were the best years of my life" balances out the hackiness that we might otherwise perceive in the character--he's "The Entertainer," yes, but he's also a committed artist--and nowhere else in the song is the collision between the bitterly comic tone in his delivery of the vocal and the tragedy of pouring your heart and soul into something that is ultimately left to the heartless discretion of suits more striking. If "I get put in the back in the discount rack / like another can of beans" is inelegant as hell, its fits perfectly.

i love the way the arrangement just gets more ridiculous as it goes

Yeah, it's of a piece with, say, John/Taupin's "Bitter Fingers," but that one's written by people who were really on the top of the industry, looking back at all the flacks they'd had to toil under along the way. I feel like Billy's resentment was probably pretty heartfelt, what with things like the debacle of his first album in his recent past, and of course the actual cutting-down of "Piano Man." Surprised he didn't try for a lyric about the mastering job on Cold Spring Harbor - "It was a beautiful track but they cut it too fast / Sound like a Chipmunk but they don't give a fuck / How can I tour on this?" I dunno.

holy shit that moog riff in the Entertainer is HELL STYX

haha

those lyrics are def better than what he actually came up with and omg that moog riff is obnoxious as fuck

xp

ha, i meant to mention styx's joeliciously titled "fooling yourself (the angry young man)" - thanks again to fact checking cuz for introducing me to that one. the twiddly, renfest-ready quality of the riff here, as much as the timbre of the instrument, connects some dots.

moog riff sounds like an icecream truck in reverse .. in hell

i srsly cannot get down this song guys

try playing it louder... perhaps out of an ice cream truck

The single cover where he's joelspreading on a backwards chair, gah.

And it's that old-timey kind of bentwood chair with a vaguely feminine curve. The implication is clear: when he says he's The Entertainer, he means that he "entertained" your mom. With his celebrated organ.

#ifyouknowwhatimean #andithinkyoudo

mulletspreading

gross

does he have a black eye on that one cover?

"the entertainer" is one of my least favorite billy joel fan favorites. it's a cute idea, and the "3:05" line always made me smile, but it wears thin kinda fast. the melody isn't strong enough to sustain the verse-verse-verse-verse-verse structure, and though he's trying his hardest to make it more interesting with all the arrangement cutesiness, it just sounds like cutesiness. and yuck that drum roll after "laid all kinds of girls." my favorite part of the song is the instrumental coda, mostly because i've been waiting three-plus minutes for something different to happen. also, this sounds even more like a harry chapin song than the last one that i said sounded like a harry chapin song.

lol many of these comments. The moog was reminding me of ELP "lucky man." Much more awful than I remembered. Anyway, The Entertainer is jaunty and jaded. Heard it many times before but once was enough for right now.

Just catching up with the last four or five: damn, lot of Moog on this album, even a little on "Root Beer Rag". I always thought "The Entertainer" was a one-off. I think the songs so far maybe stand out a little more than on Piano Man, but not much more

"The Entertainer" has always been a favorite Joel track of mine. Cynicism suits him, and paired with that cheesy Moog melody and banjo picking makes for a strange but memorable song. Even the usual clunker lines in the song make me laugh rather than cringe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VhcQiqwTp4

Last of the Big Time Spenders is the first in another block of generally overlooked Side Two numbers, yanking us away from Moogs and banjos for another piano-and-pedal-steel ballad. The title always makes me think I'm going to get a cover of Norman Greenbaum's Good Lookin' Woman but alas, Billy didn't go in for covers for a long, long time.

Not a huge fan of "The Entertainer" either. Maybe it was during my time at the classic rock station where I just got real sick of all the boo-hoo, we're big time stars but how we gotta pay the manager now? Don't call me, I'll call you.

And I love me some Billy Joel. Love me some cynicism. Even love me some moog. But "The Entertainer" just goes more than all-in on all three.

LotBTS nice step back. Nothing much more to say about it. Still trying to figure out what WMJ's "true" voice is. I think it's somewhere between "Piano Man" and "Pressure". While this song is fine, that voice isn't heard here. Instead, it's that a-woo-woo voice, the one that starts trying to teeter toward another Sweet Baby Ray imitation.

A pleasant number, with conventional chord developments and a strong Elton vibe (the lyrics are too straightforward for Bernie Taupin though).

Trying to picture Billy covering "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" and it just won't stick for some reason, which is odd cause yeah the lyrical theme seems right up his alley. Something about the riff or the rhythm.

Both got real touchtone phone numbers prominently heard (as I mention it for the 106th time.)

another kinda unmemorable song on this album, like the song title though

^^ Yeah, def. Wish I still had a fantasy football team.

I really like this one - the Elton-y piano works for me, and his singing is nice. idk, i think it has a languid charm about it that I enjoy.

also absence of insane Moog might be swaying me more than usual lol

I like it when it's playing but can't really remember it when it's over. Should give it some more spins I guess. Reminds me a little of some slightly more focused later tracks, like "Vienna" (which I also have never really fallen in love with).

sounds like an unfinished study for an elton album track. the pedal steel break is a little wtf.

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

Weekend Song: Billy as a hard workin' 9-to-5er, money in his pocket and ready for some fun times with his baby. Hey - it ain't no crime.

ain't no crime for sure, but he ain't no bob seger or bruce springsteen. or ray charles, whose voice he's sort of channeling here.

the "back-breakin', bone-shakin', belly-achin', hard-workin'" part is good practice for songs to come about not starting fires, though.

Totally gonna blast this from the CRV's speakers Friday afternoons in the parking lot before heading over to Chili's.

Billy's good with these Side 2 blue-collar interludes - "Half a Mile Away" or "Christie Lee" - that usually let off a little steam before heading toward the poignant parting finale.

You know, as late as 1980, American workers were apparently still working this mythical 9 to 5 schedule. It's 8:33 CDT here, just wondering what happened.

... on the way to that PLACE

http://www.gallup.com/poll/175286/hour-workweek-actually-longer-seven-hours.aspx

"hour workweek" sounds more my speed tbqh

Not much to say about the last two. "The Last of the Big Time Spenders" is kind of a dull piano-led piece, while "Weekend Song" is kind of a dull rocker.

On another listen, "Last of the Big Time Spenders" has a little more to it than I thought, but not as much as it needs. Probably also suffering from sequencing - it has enough buildup and affect of reflectiveness to make for a closing track, but as album filler it just feels like texture.

"Weekend Song" obviously could only be album filler... as with some other songs like this, I believe Billy had fun playing it, but his bellowing efforts at soul have always felt forced to me. He's on record as saying he was going for Leon Russell with this, and unfortunately Leon's evident comfort in this kind of material just highlights the strain for BJ. This kind of thing also gives the lie to the idea of this as a "concept album" - unless every song is going to be from a different character's POV or something, presenting both the Entertainer and the Back-Breaker Bone-Shaker in the first person just reminds you of the singer's distance from the actual lived experience of the latter. Better to stay in his observational zone and try to sketch out the lives of those who can't drive with a broken back, from the entertainer's third-person vantage point.

this album...is not very good

and listen, I'm a Timberwolves fan, I have a huge urge to pull for a mix of ill-fitting parts, untapped potential that somehow dangle the promise of being great but comes crashing down to Earth in a big heap

Both really bad at signing contracts.

hahaha

this album...is not very good

harsh truth