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

lol this first song on the bridge really is some Police worship! and not even in the 80s Rush sense where they really made it their own, it's like he's trying to sound like Sting on the verses

As if The Police recorded with Various Positions' engineer. Sounds like French or Soviet pop.

He's trying to sound like Sting, as much as he's previously tried to sound like Ray Charles and Nilsson and McCartney... not like he's trying to sneakily rip something off and have a hit, but like he's dressing in drag. I'm really buying more and more into my "Joel as the first postmodern pop star" theory. He really is most himself and most comfortable writing when he's sitting down to be somebody else.

This would not be one of my favorite Police song though, I'd admit. Giving it a few more listens, we'll see if it becomes a little headsticky.

The opening swirl of keyboards reminds me tremendously of Hall and Oates' "Head Above Water."

"Joel as the first postmodern pop star"

the first? come on now

first good one worthy of the name

bowie was capable of being david bowie. i'm unconvinced billy joel was capable of being billy joel. at the least he should get the "chameleon" credit that bowie and madonna get.

Bowie writes circles around this schmuck

(I'd probably put Dylan and Reed ahead of Bowie in the "firsties" competition fwiw)

i feel like billy is the opposite actually (imo) - he tries on genre and stylistic clothes but his inherent billy joelelocity always overtakes the proceeding

lol @ joelelocity

joelelolzcity

dylan obviously the more significant artist but his very identity as dylan - a carefully-assembled mishmash yes but a comparatively stable and very mythically built-up one - works against him here. album after album he sounds like bob dylan doing bob dylan songs. billy's billyness comes out *despite* his desire to be somebody else, and mainly in his lyrics which often seem to be the least important and conscious aspect of the songs. also in terms of sales and charts he blows dylan completely out of the water (and lou reed isn't even on the same planet, pop star wise)... there's something interesting to me about such a centerless, mutable musical brand name being up there in the top ten all-time bestselling superstar artists. for comparison, in the US at least dylan's down at 44 and bowie doesn't make the top 100.

i mean, it's a deliberate stretch and there's all kinds of problems with it so i don't mind the objections. but i feel like he's been totally misunderstood in some sense. the perception of him as a crowd-pleasing Long Island arena schmuck is far from wrong but he's also basically a pop music fan whose whole discography is cutting demos for specific other artists to cover, or something.

album after album he sounds like bob dylan doing bob dylan songs.

Figured you would say something like this, but I don't think this is accurate at all. For instance, Dylan's vocal delivery and material change dramatically over time, from the shout-y Woody Guthrie-style delivery of the first album to an extended Lefty Frizzel impression a few years later to an album of almost entirely terrible covers just a few years after that. Reed similarly goes all over the place, from aping Dylan to doo-wop to glam to experimental noise music to punk poet. Bowie is in their lineage but even more extreme in the abrupt stylistic shifts.

I will concede that all of these guys have a distinct "voice" and approach - despite all the genre exercises - that Billy doesn't ever really develop, which I think I argued upthread somewhere, although specifically in terms of his lyrics. He is much more firmly a pastiche artist, but what makes him distinctive as one is how *weak* his own voice in in comparison to these other guys (all of whom, as noted, came before him). What is distinct about him is that bitter Long Island schtick, it bleeds through every style he assumes, but there's not much there, it's flimsy and obvious, where Bowie, Reed, and Dylan all better understood mystery and ambiguity.

Like with Bowie, Reed and Dylan (and shit maybe we should throw Neil Young in here too) there's always this balance between being unpredictable and maintaining a certain personal quality. One of them might do a specific genre exercise, but it nonetheless is distinctly *them* doing it, and that tension is where the mystery and the interesting stuff is. Billy sort of disappears into his exercises, where the only real Joelian elements one can discern are usually sloppy lyrics and a certain fussiness with arrangements and rhythms. But there's no mystery there.

Joelocity II

Paul Simon is another point of comparison, writing genre songs in relatively obscure genres, but never hiding either self-awareness or intelligence.

i don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying - but again reed is not a pop star, dylan and bowie are (but not at joel's scale or level of success), and I'm not sure mystery or subjective *quality* are essential requirements of being a postmodern artist.

they aren't essential qualities, but they're why Dylan et al were better at it (and, again, first)

idk why yr disqualifying Reed as a pop star. Certainly not on the level of these other guys, but he did have hits

or rather one hit lol

but really i'm just casting about for a bolder way to say "the conventional wisdom on billy joel doesn't accurately describe what he does as a songwriter and performer." i think he's slightly more interesting than his rep. doesn't have to take anything away from these other cats.

and yes who can forget the feverish period of "loumania"... the magazine covers, the superbowl halftime shows, the cooking lessons on "good morning america"... oh and the forty-four singles of which one got to #16, two stalled just below #100 and all the rest did not chart

(for comparison to joel see the OP in this thread)

Dylan literally, at the height of his career, invented a new singing voice for himself and released Nashville Skyline

I agree with Dr. C that Joel is more interesting than he is generally given credit for.

Also that he's not in competition with Bob Dylan, sheesh. Girls, you're both pretty. He doesn't have to be credited with saving rock; he doesn't have to be disparaged as the Worst Thing Ever either.

As I have said a couple times upthread, there are a few places where I think he innovated. He arrived first at some places that other superstars hadn't got to yet. And I would certainly characterize his approach to pastiche as postmodern: winking, but also unapologetically heartfelt. His willingness to be uncool is, itself, a type of cool, and that's a pretty pomo posture.

The opening swirl of keyboards

...is a complete and crazy fakeout, promising, for seven glorious seconds, that we are about to witness the return of the angry young root beer piano man. and then, instead, boom, it's another innocent man-like genre/artist homage, except this time he's taking on someone his own age. sting is only two years younger than he is! "running on ice" is no more or less on-the-nose than anything on the previous album, and i could see it fitting in on either glass houses or nylon curtain with a few tweaks here and there. so basically, billy being billy, having fun trying on yet another face. "i'm a cosmopolitan sophisticate of culture and intelligence" sounds like he's taking the homage thing a little too far. but it also sounds exactly like something billy would say. as doctor c says above, he's really good at finding his own voice through other people's voices. he finds decent melodies that-a-way, too. thumbs up.

Busy day today, no time for Billy, so I'm listening/commenting without having read today's discussion:

The Bridge is probably, along with Cold Spring Harbor, the album of his that I had the least familiarity with going into this. I don't remember the singles having much of a radio presence (unlike "We Didn't Start the Fire," one album later), and I always assumed, from the two big singles off of this album, that the whole thing found him going all-out arena-rock. I knew that it has duets with Cyndi Lauper (which I'm curious about) and Ray Charles (which just seems like a wish fulfillment fantasy crossed with a literalization of Billy's occasional Ray impersonations throughout his career), but we'll get to those.

Anyway...

Billy does The Police does not sound like anything that I would want to hear in either theory or in practice. I'm not a Police fan, but I'm not a hater either. But this is more shrug-worthy than actively annoying.

Usually I feel some Billy comes through in the performance, if not the songwriting, but if I had first heard "Running on Ice" in the wild, I'd think it was someone else. They've done everything to copy the Police: the voice, the playing, the arrangement, the shifts between the verses and chorus - the opening piano part is the only Billy I recognize here. it's not a bad song, but pretty wild and unpolished compared to the other songs I know from the album. Seems like a very awkward transition into "This is the Time", at the least

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M443VsY4XI

This is the Time was the album's third single. Sans video, it reached #18 on the Hot 100 and #1 on Adult Contemporary. For a song I've never heard before, it apparently had a decent pop-cultural afterlife:

The song was featured on the NBA VHS NBA Superstars, in a segment showcasing Hall of Fame players from the 1950s to the 1970s.[citation needed] It was also played during Larry Bird's retirement ceremony at the Boston Garden in 1993, this time honoring past players of the Boston Celtics.[citation needed]

"This Is the Time" is the title of a 2014 season 2 episode of The Carrie Diaries in which Carrie (AnnaSophia Robb) attends her senior prom. Joel's song is referenced by character Donna LaDonna (Chloe Bridges) during her prom queen acceptance speech as the music begins to play in the background. It is mentioned twice more in conversations shortly thereafter. The Correatown cover version of the song also plays in the closing minutes of this penultimate episode.

In Italy this song was used as opening and closing theme for the soap-opera "Guiding Light" (In Italy called "Sentieri") from 1986 to 2007.[4]

https://img.discogs.com/emkaPbSD7sHbUYmPjAVkoEkKoj8=/fit-in/600x584/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-3849261-1411696035-9027.jpeg.jpg

the sound design of this song is basically perfect for me. even the wave sound effect

the songwriting itself is a little ponderous and uneventful (and potentially indifferent) but still pleasant and lifted considerably by the production. amy grant could kill this song

Thanks to high school graduations and (in my case) a religious retreat in high school, "This is the Time" has not gone away; it's an A/C standard. I have no affection for it but I don't hate it.

I had a little trouble processing a Joel track with the guitar so foregrounded. A bit ploddy but inoffensive.

Lyrics sounding very much like the weary adults I knew: my parents and their peers. Still striving for romantic connection but also so, so tired and jaded. It wasn't particularly relatable to me and my peers - teenagers with boundless energy and unquenchable desires for sex, booze, drugs, dangerous edge-dwelling adventures, and loud arena rock.

But it was, nevertheless, my high school class's chosen theme song for prom '89. Maybe we could see our future, more responsible, more ennui-laden selves in it?

i like the weird desolate/haunted vibe billy brings on the verses

I'm surprised you've never heard it, Doc! It's one of his more omnipresent songs post-1983.

"we walked on the beach beside that old hotel / they're tearing it down now but it's just as well" "someday we will both look back and have to laugh / we lived through a lifetime and the aftermath" "and so we embrace again behind the dunes / this beach is so cold on winter afternoons"

were it not for the chorus and the general vibe of domestic ennui, i'd consider this song kinda post-apocalyptic

the synthesized backdrop evokes that beach by the old hotel too

def got some solo henley vibes in the verses haunted synth AOR, i wonder if this is the same beach where the sunset grill and the basket ppl are?

agree the chorus isn't as good as the verses and kinda kills my vibe....what a weird prom song! i mean i get the very base level "time to remember" but, man, it's pretty depressing

sometimes it's too easy to let a day slip on by

don't i know it billy?

it's def "Boys of Summer"-inspired.

It's somber but actually pretty hopeful and brave on balance: yeah we're aging and caught up in our own things, but we're not done yet. "I haven't shown you everything a man can do. Stay with me baby, I've got plans for you."

It's an interesting contrast with the now-cliché nostalgic backward look at youth: "my sweet romantic teenage nights"; "I've loved these days"; making it with a redhead girl in a Chev-uh-ro-let.

It's as if he's saying, no, I was mistaken. It's actually THIS stuff that matters more. Staying together long-term. Being busy grownups who are still nevertheless willing to cling together in spite of inevitable entropy. That's the act of courage, and the most substantive, fulfilling flavor of romance. "Now I need the rest of you."

A pretty nuanced and sophisticated message for an artist who we were just disparaging as a lightweight imitator just yesterday.

I want to go on the record as saying that I feel I am being swift boated as a being part of the Shakey Billy Haterz Clubhouse

I have complicated adult relationship w/Billy Joel that is very full of nuance

<3

I want to go on the record as saying that I feel I am being swift boated as a being part of the Shakey Billy Haterz Clubhouse

I have complicated adult relationship w/Billy Joel that is very full of nuance

― Universal LULU Nation (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, November 7, 2017

^^ these are the days to hold on to

Your perspective is welcome and valued, UMS. Shakey's too.

I'm just sayin: the main diss on Billy seems to be that he just turns in half-baked tossed-off pastiches of Sting or Henley whatever, then rakes in the dough. And yet, here is a work that at least strives toward transcendence and a kind of wisdom, presented almost as a refutation to the serial selves he presented only one album earlier.

ME, IN 1986: "More like 'This is the Time'... that I start listening to Mötley Crüe!"

Gööd for yöü

were it not for the chorus and the general vibe of domestic ennui, i'd consider this song kinda post-apocalyptic

yeah apart from the glimmer of hope in the chorus this is downright Ballardian. I kind of admire it's commitment to 80s AOR schlock production values right down to the chorus box guitar lead and plunky synth backdrop (I suspect that setting is probably "Peruvian percussion"), this glistening surface undercut with ennui and exhaustion, so very very Boomer-in-'85. It's not a patch on "Boys of Summer", but they kind of do different things - "Summer" is more propulsive and this is more "white curtains billowing in an empty house" ethereal.

DON: Billy Joel is a fine craftsman, and it's been a pleasure watching so many of his songs become standards.

GHOST OF GLENN: All I know is that whenever I heard "This is the Time" on the radio when I was making my own record, I kept thinking how myself and Don might have approached the same concept: "This is time...TO CHUG ALL NIGHT!"

DON: Well, yeah.

re: adultiness and nostalgia - well, he did indicate in "Keeping the Faith" that the "whole revival" was wrapped up and that "tomorrow's not as bad as it seems." And then "The Night Is Still Young" is about wanting to pack in the touring career, spend a long night with your lady, etc. It's almost a promissory note for songs like this one.

As well, since the last album was a throwback (albeit with many 80s sonic developments), we're really feeling full force the gulf between early 1982, when The Nylon Curtain was recorded, and early 1986, when this album was finalized. The Greatest Hits bonus songs hinted at this, of course, but those aside it's a big jump from the lingering 70s Beatle pop-rock style of TNC to this archetypal mid-to-late-80s recording. I still mostly buy that Billy and Liberty could be in the same room recording this, but there's a certain chill and isolation to the sound, for me. Maybe that just reflects a bit of the prom-night sensibility from "This Night," but it's hard to disaggregate that from the general spaciousness of 80s digital production.

That said, its three weeks at #1 on Adult Contemporary were sandwiched in between runs by hits like Billy Ocean's "Love Is Forever," Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is" and "Mandolin Rain," Billy Vera's "At This Moment," the Jets' "You Got It All," and Lionel Richie's "Ballerina Girl," most of which sound far more like an isolated vocal track slotted into tech demos of DX7s and pad-triggered drum machines. (The exception is Vera's track -which is actually a 1981 live recording given new exposure on Family Ties, a genuine time-capsule of yacht-era AM gold... down to a Cannata-esque sax part.)

I was in grade school at this time and this sound is still basically what I think of "adult contemporary" as sounding like. As square as VH1 was in the 90s, by then I still think I mostly heard these in dentists' offices if anywhere. Credit to Billy for getting out something that sounds at least a little more live and band-like. And, probably, for making the chart careers of people like Hornsby and Vera possible in the first place.

re: the post-apocalyptic beach hotel: first thing I thought of was King & Straub's The Talisman, which came out in 1984. Are we getting a glimpse into Billy's airport-bookstore shopping?

That said, its three weeks at #1 on Adult Contemporary were sandwiched in between runs by hits like Billy Ocean's "Love Is Forever," Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is" and "Mandolin Rain," Billy Vera's "At This Moment," the Jets' "You Got It All," and Lionel Richie's "Ballerina Girl," most of which sound far more like an isolated vocal track slotted into tech demos of DX7s and pad-triggered drum machines

I also think of Carly Simon's comeback "Coming Around Again," huge on A/C in late '86 and early '87, and also haunted by death.

“Running on Ice” is ok, nothing too memorable but pleasant enough to listen to

I secretly love “This Is The Time”.., ok well not even secretly. I just love it.
Has a sad, slightly haunting quality that I really like... something about this song reminds me of Carly Simon’s “Let The River Run”,

It belongs in that small category of secular crossover songs that could play at a funeral or a wedding, like Bridge Over Troubled Water (but not as good as that obv)