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

got some catching up to do.

scenes from an italian restaurant - i love this unreservedly. longform without a wasted moment (in all senses of the word wasted). this is like a shangri-la's single blown out to seven and a half minutes, with overture, place-setting, story and reprise of overture seamlessly wound together with no scaramouches, no fandangos, no wayward sons, no flute solos, no phil rizzuto. okay, it's not *that* great. but still. i do think the flow is kinda flawless. the only thing that sounds out of place to me is billy shouting "yeah rock and roll" immediately after informing us that b & e are broke, fighting and crying. what's with that?

individual pieces, ranked:

1. bottle of red
2. the pounding piano run betw "my sweet romantic rights" and "brenda and eddie"
3. things are ok
4. brenda & eddie

and i like brenda & eddie a lot.

vienna - always liked this one a lot, too. something about the melody sounds very elton johnny circa "harmony," and something else about it, which i can't quite put my finger on, makes it sound more like a "52nd street" than a "stranger" song to me. and i think it's absolutely lovely.

only the good die young - reason #764 why it never ever ever ever occurred to me, a jew, that billy was jewish. no way a jewish dude writes this song. jewish kids from long island are not running with dangerous crowds, pretending they have a shot with unattainable catholic girls or displaying a working knowledge of catholic schools and churches. they might well love this song though. i did. they just wouldn't know how to write it. and that would in fact be part of its appeal.

the two syllable pronunciation of "well" in "i might as weh-well be the one" is great.

liberty's drum intro is weird and cool.

how many thousands of kids noted in their high school yearbooks in the late '70s that they'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints?

I can confirm that it was still a viable yearbook sentiment in 1989, cuz.

I used to dislike it; now I can hear the craft.

The most 80s song on this album. I hear hints of "Don't Ask Me Why" along with all sorts of snippets from An Innocent Man. I dig the shuffle. Even the brass sounds modern, in that "Golden (wha-wha-wha) Years" sort of way.

liberty's drum intro is weird and cool. - Agreed.

I don't take this narrator and the one from "Hot Blooded" from the same school at all. If anything, you could paint him as a "yeah, I could be getting laid, but The Church keeps cock-blocking me." Because, come on. What Catholic girl doesn't give it up? Just maybe not to this guy. "Oooo, you run with a Dangerous crowd. And where might those boys be hanging out tonight?"

Read somewhere that WMJ got death threats in St. Louis, warning him not to play this song. So he played it TWICE.

haha I just dislike foreigner and wanted a foil for billy's verbal energy and the band's cleverness here

That Foreigner song does represent a lot more about what's wrong with rock and roll instead of what's right.

Billy naming the object of desire "Virginia" instead of Maria or Patricia does walk the fine line between stupid and clever though.

well, there was a real Virginia, supposedly. also reminds me of "yes virginia, there is a santa claus." an almost folkloric convention: addressing a girl in the second person? consider "virginia!"

I know a Virginia who went by Ginger for many years partly to get away from people who sang this at her.

understandable. though i think Train may have committed the greater sin in this category.

Train is the greater sin, full stop. In every category.

sadly i think "drops of jupiter" might actually be their attempt at a billy joel song. tho probably u2 is their more direct reference point for big anthemic garbage. anyway though they have no place polluting this thread and i apologize for even bringing them up.

This is pretty good. I've never really thought about/listened to the lyrics before. It sounds very much like a Dion & the Belmonts tribute to my ears, especially with a lot of the doo-wop-ish asides and accents in the vocal.

Yeah, the "wo wo wo" bit in particular is a really nicely integrated doo-wop element that feels totally natural in this very different sound, and a little foretaste of An Innocent Man.

that little shuffle-skip devitto does after the piano intro before the song kicks in = my favorite thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx3QmqV2pHg

She's Always A Woman is another Elizabeth song, apparently meant to be complimentary, with regard to her negotiating savvy as his manager. Released as the album's final single, it peaked at #17 on the Hot 100, and got to #2 on the Easy Listening chart. I'm not sure what beat it out there, since I'm not sure when it peaked, but the odds favor England Dan & John Ford Coley. Lynda Carter's cover seems sadly to have done little to get her singing career off the ground, though it's a remarkable period piece, sonically.

Love the way his voice sounds so light & dreamy in this

I have a real soft spot for it. I do catch the admiration in the lyrics & delivery though over time it sounds condescending esp in light of his general tone in later years it's hard not to hear it as sarcastic

clearly this time of night i do away with most forms of punctuation so make of the above what you will :/

Maybe I've got too much "Just Like A Woman" on the mind, but this morning, this song is screaming Dylan at me.

Wonder if Henley heard this in the shadows and thought, "YES. 'HIDES LIKE A CHILD.' THIS BOY'S NAILED IT."

All that said, it is a pretty song. It's probably in the Top 20 songs of "Aren't You Listening To These Lyrics?", where prom dances end with "Wonderful Tonight" and fathers dance with their newly married daughters to "Just Like A Woman".

I think when Billy's trying to be sarcastic it's more obvious - this one to me feels like it belongs in the "singer comes off as a dick" thread. Beautiful music though, the melody is effortlessly pretty. the key change in the second part of the bridge (the higher "ohhhhh") gives me tingles sometimes

this is the official anthem of every long island wedding

I really have so little to say about this one! Some great melody stuff (mainly the move to the title line, the "she steals like a thief" bit - that's great), but the entire premise feels incredibly dated for obvious reasons surrounding the painful generalizations. Like whether or not it's misogynistic, it has the same problem as "She's A Woman" or "American Girl" where it's like the big payoff is that she, get this... is a woman. Well, the American adult female population in 1977 was around eighty million people so that really doesn't narrow things down very much. Anything we're supposed to infer based on this is essentialist baggage we're bringing in from outside the song - ah, yes, a woman, I sure know what THAT implies about this person and this relationship. Barf.

I do think Dylan's is way worse, but at least it has "Nobody feels any pain" opening things out with something so seemingly strange and off-topic that I'm always prepared to give it another chance, aha, this time it will turn out to be an interesting song. (It never is.)

i like how after the discrete chords of the first verse billy starts doing these very nice chromatic figures that kinda make the song feel centerless in a good way

Are they chromatic? I always thought they were just arpeggios. ("Just" very tasty ones.)

lmao i don't know anything about scales and briefly confused two concepts i learned 100 years ago when i was trying to learn the piano, yeah they're just arpeggios

They are great though. Didn't mean to turn this into Theory 101 class, sorry.

Anyway I think this is one of his most McCartneyan vocals. The "oh, and she never gives out" bit, with the oboe noodling in the background? That would have fit fine on Abbey Road or Let It Be (though Paul would never have been able to play a piano part like this).

Then, as if to provide an antidote to the sweetness, he thickens up the Lawn Guyland in the last verse - "suddenly cruel," "nobody's fool" sound like he's wearing a boxing mouthguard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccdC_EPih2E

Get It Right The First Time leads us into the home stretch of the album. I always forget about this one.

she's always a woman - beautiful medley. the "she takes care of herself" part is one of his best paul mccartney/emitt rhodes moments. the tone of the lyric is confusing to me. i honestly can't tell if he's trying to be sweet, trying to be a dick, trying to remember what bob dylan said, or what.

get it right the first time - sounds like an early, lesser pass at "tell her about it." the la la la part is very stevie wonder. i, too, hardly remember this one. i can imagine it being a fun live jam.

*beautiful medley* is my way of saying *beautiful melody.*

I was dreading today's, but it wasn't that bad! Maybe my memories are colored by its proximity to... tomorrow's little ditty.

I like the rough voice he's got here. He's an excellent singer, with a few limited tricks in his bag, but this one just sounds like him sangin' away. Reminds me of "Josie", where Fagan slips down a little from his leather upholstered sidewing stool to exclaim "When Josie comes HOME! TONIGHT."

Nothing on Who Sampled Who for this one! I figured for sure someone would've used this. It's got that groove. The bass is in an odd signature. Maybe not a hip-hop artist, but surely some Daft Punk wannabe would've liked this one.

Because who doesn't like a nice breezy samba?

Quickly catching up...

"Only the Good Die Young" - If not a perfect song, than definitely a perfect Billy Joel song--witty and gently subversive lyrics (I love the fairy tale-ish detail of "they built you a temple and locked you away"), a muscular and diverse arrangement, hooks for days.

"She's Always a Woman" - Frequently kind and suddenly cruel, indeed. Billy's inability to contain his spite in some of these lyrics gives the song a weird tension, but I don't hear any attempt at democracy like I did with "Just the Way You Are" (where, as I said above, I hear the song as a kind of conversation that grants the subject some--though admittedly not much--agency as a character), so for me this is mostly just a kind of nice song that doused with a jarring sourness.

"Get It Right the First Time" - Spirited album filler.

kinda hate "She's Always a Woman" - piano part is too busy, the lyrics are (as noted) a shitty riff on a (mostly) shitty Dylan lyric, and while the melody is v pretty (def McCartney/Emmitt Rhodes school) the other crap gets in the way too much imo

"Get It Right The First Time" has some nice things going on in the arrangement, especially the flute, but man does it feel like album filler. No surprise it's the first thing we've hit on this record that's not either a single or a fan favorite or both. Probably fun to play on, but there's just not enough hooks and the whole concept is pretty lame. "Get it right the first time, that's the main thing ... Get it right the next time, that's not the same thing" --- zzzz, really, "not the same thing?" How so? Who cares? Why bother?

yeah it's fine. enjoyable but rote

lyrics should've ended with "I took five minutes to write this/and now this song is over/got it right the first time"

it's funny bc before this track i was ready to post something along the lines of "i've never heard the last two tracks of the stranger but i'm pretty sure this album 100 percent rules?"

i mean it's still really good imo

Feel like he has one of these on each album... midtempo workout with no compelling reason to exist, but like, decent enough... Worse Comes To Worse, Weekend Song, and All You Wanna Do Is Dance (if you squint)...

Finally caught up. Turnstiles was the best album up to that point, with two tracks I had heard of but never heard ("Summer, Highland Falls" and "Miami 2017"). Both earn their place as fan favorites pretty easily - perhaps predictably, they are my favorite new finds from this thread. "Prelude/Angry Young Man" is also cool, if a bit of a weaker version of "Brenda Rinetti" musically

Of course, the Stranger still blows that album away. Hard to deny most of the songs on it, despite having heard them countless times. Had heard and enjoyed "Vienna" a few times before, didn't realize it was one of the few non-single tracks from this album. Save something for the next few albums! Well, I guess "Get It Right the First Time" is a surprising dud, except the Stevie Wonder bit

And since no one mentioned it (maybe because it's so obvious), "James" seems like a near steal of "Daniel" by Elton John. Same instrumentation, same mood, lyrics about a friend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S129T9kav8I

Everybody Has a Dream closes The Stranger with a song Billy had apparently had kicking around since the Cold Spring Harbor era, though I don't know when it got set up with the Charles-influenced verses and gospel-borrowing choruses. The last two minutes are effectively "The Stranger (Reprise)," though not identified as such on the jacket. Love that whistle! Online sources indicate it began life as a James-Taylor inspired song in waltz time - he must have really been struggling to make that work or you figure it would have cropped up on Streetlife Serenade when he was really hard up for material. But anyway.

As before, I recommend to the devoted fans the Sirius XM clips of Billy Joel talking about the album, which have little in the way of deep insight but a lot of little treats. In this case you get him at the piano knocking through the pieces of the Abbey Road medley and some version of the "Oyster Bay" song-fragment when discussing "Scenes," and his attempt at a Gordon Lightfoot impression on "She's Always a Woman."

Also, just to restate what a milestone this album was for him, we've really crossed a rubicon here. The album before this one peaked at #122. This one got to #2; of his seven remaining pop LPs, all would peak in the top ten, and four would hit #1. That's not counting live albums, and of course the juggernaut double-disc Greatest Hits. His singles would perform a bit more unevenly, but he still has twenty top-twenty hits ahead of him, including three number ones. I don't know if Billy Joel can be said to have an imperial phase... but if it weren't for this album, I doubt any of us would have ever heard of him. Maybe from alternate-timeline Sounds of the Seventies comps that dug up "Piano Man" to stuff as filler between bigger hits.

hmmm. a song on one of my all-time favorite artists' signature albums and i don't remember a thing about it. i don't even remember the title. i don't remember the "stranger" reprise outro. i'm aware there were songs after "she's always a woman," but my recollections end there. a billy black hole.

sounds like he's sort of going for '68 comeback era elvis presley, in addition to the usual ray charles reach. and failing miserably. while losing himself in palaces of sand. whatever that means.

also this doesn't sound like it would belong on the stranger even if it was good.

Yeah.... this one's never meant much to me. It's okay I guess but seems kinda obvious and uninspired for how long he'd had it around and how much you'd think the idea of dream-having might have meant to this scrappy underdog guy. The "Stranger" reprise just feels like filler to me - I mean I'm certainly not fooled into thinking this has all been some concept album, or a symphonic composition or something. Maybe the idea is that after all the dreams, what waits for you is not Vienna, but the cynical performances of so many strangers. More of a Plastic Ono Band ending than a Band on the Run ending, if you will - tho obviously, unearned reprises were a favored McCartney device.

Ugh -- imitating Leon Russell but writing for Joe Cocker.

Too Vegas-y. I do like the "Stranger" reprise, though.

I always forget about the reprise since I always stop this album before EHAD.

Always make it to the Band on the Run reprise though.

The intro of "The Stranger" is one of the best bits of the album, so I don't mind hearing it a third time. It's better than this merely ok closing song, at least. The reprise has some extra strings too I think

https://img.discogs.com/3yTdtKiUS-e9j88GSm4r7hJZA5k=/fit-in/600x603/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7403788-1441301169-6695.jpeg.jpg https://img.discogs.com/qQFhrlXzWvGrI_-PC7ysFoON0ig=/fit-in/600x607/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7403788-1441301178-2299.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/fk3RHgU110t6Kzsl-Q3EovgiFig=/fit-in/600x599/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7403788-1441301181-7806.jpeg.jpg https://img.discogs.com/jO3d20RswbhKAsHlp9Ia_QPEhNM=/fit-in/600x608/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7403788-1441301172-6397.jpeg.jpg

52nd Street was recorded in the summer of 1978, a year after the Stranger sessions, and following, as before, a substantial Spring tour. This time, of course, Joel had a mega-hit under his belt. I haven't actually found a ton of "making of the album" stuff, just a lot of chatter about how the title, besides being an Abbey Road-like nod to the location of the recording studio, tipped the album's slightly jazzier hat to the incredible musical history of that part of Midtown. But overall it seems like Billy, the band, and Ramone just got back to work making another record.

The album, as already noted, was a massive seller. Released October 13th, 1978, it reached #1 a month later and held on through the end of the year, plus another week at the end of January. It would go on to be 1979's best-selling album; I suspect it would have held the title in '78, if not for a certain couple of Travolta-headed items. Its three US singles were all hits, and in 1980 it was awarded an Album of the Year Grammy. For a real glimpse into the moment, check out his nice long Rolling Stone profile by Dave Marsh. Cheech & Chong got the cover, this time.

https://www.superseventies.com/oaaa/oaaa_joelbilly3.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhF8AgBR8hM

Big Shot opens the album with an appropriately scuzzy, mean-tempered rocker. Released as the second single in January 1979, it peaked at #14 and probably swung that second #1 stint for the LP. As well, unless I missed something along the way, this is our first encounter with a Billy Joel music video, though arguably it's Liberty DeVitto who gets the white-hot spot-light.

https://img.discogs.com/V2jtk7fnM7lGhEdVyAfnElR7E8g=/fit-in/600x606/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-3332642-1326192231.jpeg.jpg

i love the opening of Big Shot, like a real punch inthe face musically