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

I've warmed to this one too.

at it's core it has the classic Joelian underdog POV but it's all aspirational without a trace of sourness, and the vocal arrangement is great, kinda reminds me of the Raspberries (who were enamored of similar nostalgia exercises). and there's no fat on the track, no showy rhythmic switchups or aimless bridges, all the different little melodic bits are precisely arranged to flow smoothly.

ahhhhh i love this

so much of my childhood was endless hours singing this song into a hairbrush microphone in front of the mirror

i love the way the drums almost literally *crack* they’re so sharp

Can I just say how much I love the handclaps in this song? Because I really, really do.

Terrific key changes in this song, too -- from the home key for the opening chorus, it pivots to a new key based on the flatted fifth for the verses, then again to the flatted fourth for the bridge. Great songwriting.

yeah, it's pretty cleverly done, doesn't draw attention to itself

er, flatted THIRD for the bridge

We'll forgive you this time, Phil, but don't make such an egregious mistake ever again. We have standards here.

musically this is an incredible gem imho and possibly his greatest song of all. yeah it's a pastiche but almost every billy joel song is in some sense "in the style of" and it turns out he inhabits frankie valli's shoes so naturally it just feels like a billy joel song. so packed with energy and excitement in a short running time. when liberty's drums announce the hook around 2:05, now with stop-and-start drama, and the wash of background vocals takes center stage - - - that might be the most transcendent moment in his entire catalog, and from there to the end of the song it's just joy, joy, joy, "my UPtown giiiiiirl!" gives me goosebumps. i still basically stand by most of the following from five years ago:

(Billy) had this really convincing match-up between his own look-and-feel (tics, fashion, visual associations generally) and the material of his songs, which added up are like the ten-year story of a grouchy, alcoholic New Yorker with contempt for everyone and years in the trenches playing shitty house-pianist gigs and relentless touring to back it up. If he were a lesser songwriter that'd just leave him as a memorable grump with a predictable cult, but the thing is his songs were really really earwormy and he had a genuinely solid backing band, great producer, and somehow wedded all the baggage of his persona to something you would kind of relate to. Joel never casts himself as the sad-sack you're rooting for - he's the underdog you think of yourself being, who actually tells the boss off and skips town and rages against the phonies and hangs around in scuzzy alleyways with a saxophone because after so many Friday nights in this city, man, you get over trying to be in the coolest places at the coolest times. It just works as a package, and even if the songs had stayed as strong, the rest falls apart completely once he gets an MTV budget and a huge arena stage with a vast battleship of a piano.

So An Innocent Man is the last solid moment not just because it has his last amazing grab-bag of singles ("Uptown Girl" is in my top five for this poll), but because it completes the character arc: the boomer settles down, actually delivers on the claim way back in "Angry Young Man" that he's over it all (or the "got a new wife" narrator of "Italian Restaurant"), and nestles in with some well-delivered nostalgia. Would have been a perfect album to retire on - but of course you don't retire at age 35 with three top ten hits.

And Greatest Hits I & II is in this sense the perfect Joel album because it gets the whole sweep of that, but just jumbles up the order so it makes a consistent melange of bitterness, redeemed bitterness, righteous bitterness, bitterness hoping to be proved wrong, and trying to get into girls' pants. No wonder it's such great house-cleaning music (I was doing dishes to Joel just the other day).

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 10 April 2012 19:25 (five years ago) Permalink

(...)

I think I may actually be swinging "Uptown Girl," god is it hook-laden and boy is it the perfect conclusion to my hastily sketched Billy Joel metanarrative above - - not only does he finally get the girl, he finally LIKES the girl, even though she is an uptown big-shot kind of girl, like he seems to have maybe gotten over his bullshit a little.

And I mean, Frankie Valli is awesome, why not make some more Four Seasons songs?

― Doctor Casino, Wednesday, 11 April 2012 15:35 (five years ago) Permalink

agree that I don't think he has a song that tops this one (at least not so far, and I don't have high hopes for what comes after)

• One of the reasons Billy gives for him and Elle Macpherson breaking up was him seeing a photo of the two of them together, and him thinking he looked like a little organ grinder's monkey, following her along the boardwalk. So with that said, apparently he got over that feeling.

• It's been edited out of the YouTube, but the intro to the video originally panned down to Billy in the garage office, watching MTV. And when it finally debuted on "Friday Night Videos" four weeks later, Billy was watching that vectored record needle sequence! Hey, it impressed me at the time.

• This album is just a lot of fun. I get most of my kicks from the sourpuss Billy, but I had forgotten about what a hoot this song is.

• Elton John never forgot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxiMVafp0mY

"She's been living in her white-bread world as long as anyone with hot blood can" is SUCH a great line. Very McCartney-esque. And "You know I can't afford to buy her pearls, but maybe someday when my ship comes in, she'll understand what kind of guy I've been and then I'll win" is quintessential Billy.

lool i giess i never read the lyrics
i always thought it was “as long as anyone with half a chance”

The key change in the last part is affecting and effective.

the wordless...sub-chorus (?) constitutes literally the best fifteen or so seconds of the entire billy joel catalog

I enjoy this more than I should, given what a hard time I have listening to Frankie Valli. Still, this song's legacy for me will always be The Simpsons.

Tom and the Freaky Trigger gang divided for and against. As usual some astute remarks in the comments: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/07/billy-joel-uptown-girl/comment-page-1/#comments

Oh, thanks for linking that! Popular entries always worth a reread, and the discussions can be a great parallel track (I guess sometimes overlapping) to ILX hivemind.

Very hard song to deny the appeal of, but out of all his catalog, it's also the song I am most sick of (even more than Piano Man). I used to love the hell out of it; nowadays I'm 50/50 to find it delightful or cloying. Depends on my mood

It's funny, listening to Valli tonight, I never would have noticed it except via Uptown Girl but the Four Seasons were classic victims of "wimpy early 60s recordings of rhythm sections" syndrome. Obviously their biggest records are stone cold classics, so this isn't a jab, but the extra jolt of energy you get with Liberty's whip-crack drums (and Ramone's 70s-finding-its-way-to-the-80s production savvy) really transforms the sound. I mean it's basically the same steady stomp as on "Sherry," the same "open with a drum flourish" approach as "Walk Like a Man," but so, so different.

The Four Seasons might also be unusual in terms of this album's lineup of pastiches in that they'd had a hit comparatively recently, with "December, 1963," which topped the charts while Billy's career was at rock bottom, in between Streetlife Serenade and Turnstiles. So really it's not so shocking that one could have a hit with this stuff in 1983, though I'm sure it still startled Valli. Perhaps this was the impetus for the first Four Seasons studio LP since 1977, 1985's Streetfighter, but you'd never guess it from the title track and its pathetic video - Valli goes synthpop!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLhSTo9bq0g

I guess these lyrics are sorta like "Uptown Girl," if it sucked:

I know how to jump over rooftops
I know how to wire a car
I know how to deal with people on the street
That's not where you are

You come from a special place
A place I don't quite understand
Baby I would change the world for you
But I can't change who I am

Guess I’ve always heard the line as “As long as anyone can hop the can” (picturing an Oscar The Grouch type garbage can).

i like that better

I listened to this like 4 times yesterday, it is great. It would top my (admittedly short) list of good Billy Joel songs.

I mixed up Valli w Lymon upthread a ways, my bad

catching up:

"Easy Money" - really good songwriting! to the point where I'd like to hear an actual soul singer with a little better chops and subtlety cover it, Billy as always a little overblown in the delivery, but didn't know this one, one of the better new discoveries

"Innocent Man" - like the chorus, a little lukewarm on the verses

"The Longest Time" - pretty goddamn incredible, total pastiche that meets the level of the stuff it's aping...kinda crazy in terms of arrangements in the middle of the glossy high-80s production era, it's so minimal, claps, bassline, and some slight brushed drums...

"This Night" - get this phony, gloppy Sha-Na-Na shit outta here bruh

"Tell Her About It" - kinda reminds me of the music that might play in a party scene in Police Academy or something, this type of thin digital piano "rock n' roll" with overcooked horns was so prevalent in the 80s

"Uptown Girl" - you just can't argue with some songs, so I'm not gonna....I'm sure the A&R dude shit his pleated slacks when he heard this. His voice is interesting, sounds almost artificially high -- i wonder if they did the old trick where they slow the tape machine a half or whole step down while recording, then playback at 30 ips

That's what I thought happened.

yeah I mean Uptown Girl is obv ubiquitous and I have heard it in the wild for decades, but I'm not sure I ever even pegged it as a Joel song! maybe I thought it was Huey Lewis or something. it doesn't even sound like him, IMO - is it all just Valli-aping? did he ever sing high like this again?

Huey's allright but this song is way out of his league

he's claimed in interviews that he did the "innocent man" note with a sense of "this is probably the last time I'll be able to do this note so what the hell.". but it's not like he ever did a lot of high notes in the first place! maybe the "do!" in "all for leyna" ...?

it would probably would have added some life to some tracks tbh - "half a mile away" for example really needed some high end and more of a sense of exuberance cutting loose from the meat n potatoes band. "it ain't no cry-ee-yi-ee-yime" ...

xpost shakey ot fuckin m

pretty stoked that this is the song where shakey joins the club, however brief this moment may shine

hey now I have expressed appreciation for some other tracks on here! I'm not made of stone.

tell billy about it!
tell him everything you feel!
give him every reason to accept
that you're for real

Billy Joel's Greatest Hits EP as Compiled By Me

1. Uptown Girl
2. Movin' Out
3. The Longest Time
4. You May Be Right
5. Only the Good Die Young

Burn the rest

chill out -- "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" is coming soon!

holy shit Billy Joel just had another baby last week

i wonder if christie lee is ever like "dooooon't forGET your SECond WIFE"

He's making up for the dudes who never had time for a wife.

billy has loads of time for many wives

'snippet from the ed sullivan show' was a very popular music video trope. l.a. guns did it for 'never enough,' and obviously nirvana did it in a more absurdist fashion.

Wow, this guy had quite the act!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D91KfEf6vPU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD18zj1UYDY

Careless Talk leads us into our accustomed stretch of lesser-known side-B tracks, which this time around will be a short run, given the album's barrage of singles. Your basic "don't believe the rumors" song, it was the B-side to "Uptown Girl" in some markets.

A well done pastiche that does little for me as a song.

^^ this

the "TALKy, talky talky" backing vocals get stuck in my head. and the "ah yah yaaahh yah." i think i like it, but it's possible i would like it better with the lead vocal swapped out for a saxophone or surf-style guitar.

It's not by any means terrible.

catching up.

tell her about it – i like this song more now than i did when the album came out. i think back then it seemed like too much of a retreat after the relatively modern/new-wavey twists of the singles from glass houses and the nylon curtain, and i had wanted more of that, and this song in particular struck me as the least natural and most self-conscious of all the stylistic exercises on an innocent man. hearing it today, i can't help but smile at the craft and at billy's newfound self-confidence and optimism. also, i am wondering right now if certain style council songs wouldn't have been better off with billy singing them instead of paul weller.

uptown girl – this on the other hand i loved immediately. a perfect fit and a perfect rip. the key changes are indeed sublime, as noted by a couple posters above. the lead vocal, all the vocals, are peak billy. every time i hear it again, i think i'm not sure i need to hear it again, and yet i can't turn it off. that said, as downtown-boy-meets-uptown-girl songs go, i'd rather hear the four seasons' "dawn."

careless talk – the mathematics of peak billy: craft + confidence = mediocre side 2 album tracks that are way, way better than his previous mediocre side 2 album tracks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru-gkHHwDb4

Christie Lee tells the tale of a horn-loving heartbreaker, set to some old-time rock-n-roll. For a (slightly) more relaxed, bar-band-flavored take, check the demo.

https://i.imgur.com/N6dH9fC.gif

I'd always hated this song without really paying attention to the lyrics, on the assumption that it was just a dumb compliment-brag about his cool girlfriend. Actually paying attention to it, it's more a harmless dumb punchline song, where most of is there just to get us to "all she wanted was the sax." Cute. If it was a minute shorter, as it surely would have been in 1958, I'd give it a full thumbs up, since I don't mind the effort at an 80s-ification of Jerry Lee Lewis. Kind of amazing how little the Piano Man has gone in this direction, with "Weekend Song" maybe the closest thing we've seen.