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

definitely!

and yeah, adult content agogo in this thing. this song (& the entire Grease movie) did not fully reveal its meaning to me until I was MUCH older

That comically affected "nohnohnohnoh you had to be a beeeg shot, deeenja" bit ruins this song for me. Otherwise, it's fine, if a little lyrically underfed. It sounds like he was very deliberately going for another "Movin' Out"-style album opener.

Also, some serious ACT-ING! in that video.

"deeenja" for me is redeemed by the later "Mmmm, big shot!" BRAAAOOOWOWOWOWOWoowowowo....

or maybe ACT-ING! BRAAAOOOWOWOWOWOWoowowowo....

If this song has any big sin, for me, it's staying on its lyrical mark too doggedly; I won't call it one-dimensional cause I do think the "guy is singing it to himself" angle is interesting, but essentially each verse recapitulates the same point, the story doesn't go anywhere, and this other angle would be clearer if we had a "Stranger"-like admission that Billy's been there, or even some discussion of what's going to happen tonight after all this (though that would risk a 'punchline' type ending I guess). I think in my unconscious desire for a plot I've always read "but you went over the line!" in the third verse as carrying more weight than it does, indicating a situation beyond this pain-in-the-neck character that's really getting worse... glasses were smashed, guns were drawn, someone was killed - - - you just can't carry on and on like that with these mafiosos, big shot!

Interesting that "Who Are You" was released around the time this was recorded. As we've seen, Billy was no stranger to hangover songs, but it's fun to think of them as some kind of pair: our singer is actually talking to Daltrey, still so wasted from the night before that he doesn't even register any of the rant, thinks Billy is a policeman, and just keeps slurredly asking him "who are you???"

Liberty is incredibly, hilariously distracting in that video

wow i've never seen that video. liberty being liberty. billy being the worst mick jagger i've seen in a long time.

just wait til the "you may be right" video

lol otm

ha.

there's a lot i love about "big shot" -- the stop-start rhythms, the use of "front-page bold-type" as a putdown (he really *did* love the new york times, the daily news) -- but mostly i can't get over how much he sounds like michael j. fox fronting a rock band. was this song mjf's primary source for how to rock? not fair to blame billy for what came later. but i do.

"this is your cousin marvin! MARVIN JAGGER!"

haha

I wish he'd written lyrics for at least one go-round of the "oh oh wo, oh woooooah" part. No idea what they should be about but it does feel a bit like "My Love" with so much obvious "I've got writer's block but it's time to record the album" placeholder stuff.

And just for trivia fun, this album was the first ever commercially released CD y'all.
http://ultimateclassicrock.com/the-first-compact-disc-released/

ha my mom sent me that tidbit recently, it was the anniversary of release I believe?

That comically affected "nohnohnohnoh you had to be a beeeg shot, deeenja" bit ruins this song for me.

― the general theme of STUFF (cryptosicko), Saturday, September 9, 2017 1:33 PM

I kept calling that the Guido part, but really, I think I'm gonna start calling it the "Triumph the Insult Comic" part.

"deeenja" for me is redeemed by the later "Mmmm, big shot!" BRAAAOOOWOWOWOWOWoowowowo....

― Doctor Casino, Saturday, September 9, 2017 1:42 PM

Was about to say. Falls right down this Joe Walsh hole there for a moment.

(Which, if you've ever fallen down a Joe Walsh hole...)

It works ok as a hungover narrator talking to himself, but hearing how this song and "Just the Way You Are" may have been written about the same person adds some texture. They were a team, so it's probably based on them both.

He did the Triumph voice on the demo too. Also noteworthy, what a difference there is between "spoon in your nose" and "spoon UP your nose"!

Had the same idea as DC had about adult drunken antics. Putting spoons up their nose, probably forks up their rear... just another Friday night of doing swigs of beer and making cigarettes glow.

Oh, and those BRAAAOOOWOWOWOWOWoowowowo parts sound like he's still trying to channel Ronnie a little bit.

Not the guitar parts, but the bridge with the horns part - oh i moved a lot of furniture today.

Huh, Wiki leans on the old tale that it was about Bianca Jagger - though based only on observing her at dinner with Mick, and not on a terrible first date as older lore had it. Her close association with Halston himself made that a little *too* obvious of a clue - "You're So Vain" it ain't.

Why is he holding a trumpet?

"Big Shot" annoys the hell out out of me -- "Bennie and the Jets" covered in snot.

He looks like he's taking a real painful onstage dump on that 7" cover

This is really bad, two-note hook that goes nowhere. Video is A+ hilarious though, "cool" these guys were not.

"Big Shot" annoys the hell out out of me -- "Bennie and the Jets" covered in snot.

Both songs covered by the Beastie Boys!

More fun from http://www.popspotsnyc.com/billy_joel_52nd_street/

Billy is so much better at snotty lyrics than romantic or serious lyrics. "Big Shot" is not really a favorite, but there's a few sharp lines in this and he also hits the delivery. I don't know much of this is aimed at himself (though it can easily be read that way) - are there many songs of his where he is self-aware and/or self-deprecating? I can't think of them, and I've never heard the song that way

Well, not counting things like the Stranger kicking him right between the eyes, "Angry Young Man" has a similar sympathetic "it's really about him" fan reading, with a similar weakness - "go to his grave as an angry old man" and "Halston dress" make it sorta unlikely that this is supposed to be the narrator.

The Halston and Elaine's namechecks are kinda clunky too but the song's Bennie & The Jets style bounce still makes me happy.

Man, the PopSpots for this one is bonkers, hats off to that guy. Tracking down college librarians and old hands who remember the coffee shop and shit... that's cool.

So the trumpet apparently belonged to Freddie Hubbard (who shows up later on the album). Billy says in the 2016 Sirius clips that he never knows what to do with his hands in photo shoots, without the piano, and clearly this is a super hurried shoot since they just went straight downstairs from either the studio or the label (both on 52nd Street). So apparently they were just kind of casting about for something he could hold and probably the trumpet fit the bill being both jazzy and 52nd-Street-ish, and not a normal part of the Billy Joel band/sound. Kinda wish he'd gone with one of the early keytars.

That reminds me - RIP Billy's Moog! I don't think we heard it anywhere on The Stranger. I wonder if Joel was just tired of it or if it was, like, Phil Ramone's one condition for recording.

yeah RIP moog :D

yeah that photo blog is amazing, kudos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4gOIt-M02A

After that rockin' opener, Honesty, like the intro to "The Stranger," reassures us that the Piano Man is still in the house. Later referred to by Joel as "the most bullshit song I ever wrote," it apparently got its lyric written quickly in order to fend off Liberty DeVitto singing the title line as "sodomy."

It was the album's third single, oddly backed with either "Root Beer Rag" or "Mexican Connection." It peaked at a respectable #24 (same as "Only The Good Die Young") going Top Ten on Easy Listening (aka "Hot Adult Contemporary" as of 1979) and to #1 in France. Though nominated for a Grammy for Song of the Year, it never had a chance with competition including "I Will Survive" and "Chuck E.'s In Love." "What A Fool Believes" took the crown and I can't really argue. Ultimately, it would be his biggest hit not to be included on the original Greatest Hits package, except in some overseas editions where it replaces "Don't Ask Me Why." (The CD reissue added it back in.)

There's another music video but it isn't much to look at - just a straight run through the song.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a5/Honesty_single.jpg

They really got their money's worth out of what must have been a ten-minute photo shoot with that trumpet... fifteen if they stopped to grab a coffee before heading back to the elevator.

apparently they were just kind of casting about for something he could hold and probably the trumpet fit the bill being both jazzy and 52nd-Street-ish, and not a normal part of the Billy Joel band/sound.

also, trumpets were kind of a thing at that exact moment. maynard ferguson, the "rocky" theme, chuck mangione (ok not a trumpet but still), randy brecker, all sorts of groups w/brass sections and jazz and jazz fusiony pretensions. and billy definitely appealed to that crowd.

only really familiar with songs in the attic, which i used to borrow from my dad when i was in middle school. been following this thread to see when "summer highland falls" would show up -- that was always my favorite. i'm glad it seems to be popular here too!

i can definitely hear the jackson browne influence, not a bad thing necessarily imo

It's absence from the Greatest Hits I owned kept me from hearing it too much, but it was still in enough of a rotation on Lite FM radio in the 90s that I was grateful for the omission. I know I've said before that the line defining good cheesy Billy and bad cheesy Billy is ambiguous and ever-shifting, but in the case of this song, it definitely has something to do with the distinction between sentimentality and schmaltz. "Honesty" is schmaltz.

Later referred to by Joel as "the most bullshit song I ever wrote"

billy otm. if "big shot" is "bennie and the jets" covered in snot, this is "harmony" covered in mucus.

(there was a time in my life when i was impressed how the last syllable of "you're the one that i depend upon" turns into the first syllable of the last chorus. that syllable was the beginning and end of my "honesty" appreciation.)

fwiw, Billy was mostly taking the opportunity to be self-deprecating - "oh like i've always been so honest" etc. I think the song's okay, and the recording and production choices are all correct for a song like this... but it does feel kinda like a plodding ballad-by-numbers, maybe with power ballad aspirations, building to a Broadway-worthy conclusion. I'm wishing it went in some kinda unexpected direction somewhere along the way; on this listen it's reminding me oddly of "I'm So Tired" and it could really use the equivalent of the "You say, I'm putting you on, but it's NO JOKE" section. I mean I think that's what the "I can find a lover..." bridge is trying to do, throw some 'rock' in there, but it's still not sonically varied enough. Where's that Moog when you really need it??

i kinda like Honesty tbh but I hate the way he gives that weird round-vowel delivery of "YOUUUU"

except in some overseas editions where it replaces "Don't Ask Me Why."

So now I'm wondering about the reasons behind switching the songs, but I've got an idea what the answer would be if I posed the question.

Ha! I think it's just plain old chart performance and release history - "Don't Ask Me Why" either wasn't released or didn't chart in Japan, but "Honesty" at least got to #53 there... etc.

Owing to its absence on the comp, I'd never heard it til me or my sister found ourselves with a copy of the album (maybe my parents' old copy?). One of those medium-sized hits that just didn't have a super long-term airplay life, and from an awkward late-70s pop moment not well-served by a lot of the station formats I grew up with. That is, it might have been too "ballad" for Classic Rock as it got solidified, and too "power" for the adult-contemporary stations. Looking at the charts from early 1979, when "My Life" had its peak, there's all this kinda drippy ballad stuff in the top 40 that I never heard growing up - "Too Much Heaven," "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," "Sharing the Night Together," "Don't Throw It All Away," "Lotta Love," "We've Got Tonite"... if it weren't for the post-SNF disco wave, listening to Casey Kasem would have been seriously soporific. Thanks in part to the Yacht revival, I love that stuff now, but outside of the rare dentist's office spin, this stuff had all vanished by the mid-to-late-80s I think...

yeah Mum's cassette comp had Honesty on it, that's prob why I like it so much

and that 1979 syrupy ballad stuff was all over Australian MOR radio, especially our local AM station

yr examples - Too Much Heaven," "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," "Sharing the Night Together," "Don't Throw It All Away," "Lotta Love," "We've Got Tonite" - basically the songs that I remember as a kid

sidebar: some coworkers who are my age & older are obsessed with Yacht Rock and it drives me ~insane~ because they talk about it like it's now some kind of legit genre & not a stupid joke from 2005

*folds arms*

this song isn't very good

you arent very good

(sorry i dont mean that)

lol

Can't blame Brad for his honesty.

top 40 that I never heard growing up - "Too Much Heaven," "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," "Sharing the Night Together," "Don't Throw It All Away," "Lotta Love," "We've Got Tonite".

until you said 5 seconds later that you love this stuff now, i was all set to start another "doctor casino listens" thread!