Music for chewing Prozac: Billy Joel
Two things occurred to me today when, in my car, I heard Billy Joel's "Say Goodbye to Hollywood":
1) Like a lot of Billy Joel's songs, I have no idea what the hell this one is about, really. Someone's leaving Hollywood. They should, therefore, say goodbye. My baby.
2) Is there any recording artist who recorded more depressing songs over the course of his career without really leaving the impression that his music is depressing?
I mean, really -- take a look at Billy Joel's catalog. Some of the up numbers jump out at you -- even the up numbers ("Uptown Girl," for instance) are, upon closer inspection, pretty depressing.
Even his Greatest Hits album (which is, by definition, the songs that would have the greatest commercial appeal) is, for anyone who's paying attention, sort of a list of reasons to try to off yourself or check into a clinic (both of which Joel had some experience with early in life).
"Piano Man" -- Guy too talented for his small time bar gig looks around at the drunks and losers he's entertaining and wonders, even as they ask him, "What the hell am I doing here?" Everybody in the place has a sort of depressing story -- he's simply helping them "forget about life for a while."
"New York State of Mind" -- A bummed out guy who has let reality "slide," "out of touch with the rhythm and blues" wanders New York solemnly trying to get in touch with himself and where he's from. He doesn't have any reasons. He's left them all behind.
"The Stranger" -- Even if you love someone, even if you think you can trust them, chances are you don't know them at all. This is human nature and you can't do anything about it. Try to roll with it, because fighting it is worse.
"Just the Way You Are" -- Sweet song about a woman who is trying to regain the affection of her lover because, as he admits, he "might not seem to care." She imagines that she's too familiar and that he doesn't see her anymore. He assures her this isn't true but worries she'll never believe in him the way that he believes in her. For every heartwarming line, there's a heartbreak. Darkly fascinating little ditty.
"Movin' Out" -- You have to escape your life before it crushes you beneath its own weight and, at the end of it, you have nothing to show for it. RUN! RUN! Between Bruce Springsteen, Tom petty and Billy Joel (who also wrote "My Life" on a similar theme) this ground was pretty well tread in the late seventies and early 80s.
"Big Shot" -- We all want success. But it inevitably turns us into jackasses. We forget what's really important, forget our friends, forget ourselves. This can be amusing to others -- but it's really a tragedy.
Some of these are so self-explanatory I needn't go into it -- "Goodnight Saigon," "Allentown," "Pressure," "Tell Her About It."
I just think it's amazing that if you asked ten people to describe Billy Joel's music it would be incredible if even one of them said "depressing" -- even though I think it's hard to argue there's a much better, more succinct description.
Or maybe it's not depressing -- it's ABOUT depression. And that's a very different thing. Sometimes expressions and explorations of depression can be deeply cathartic.
Comments (10)
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Joe, Billy Joel didn't earn the nickname the "angry young man" for nothing.
Anyway, he is a very talented musician and lyricist and I am a big fan. He's an intellectual tough guy, kind of like John Lennon was.
Posted on November 12, 2007 7:20 PM
I think you nailed it Joe ! I will never listen to Billy Joel again without really listening to the message of the song.
Posted on November 12, 2007 7:42 PM
Not sure I agree that Billy Joel is consistently depressing. I like that his songs aren't just shallow love songs, but he has offered his takes on 20th century history. On a blog I developed for a client, I posted "You Tube" music videos of several Billy Joel hits that are quite evocative of times and places of the last 60 years. I've since used these music videos to spark my kids' interest in history:
Leningrad
http://jimbuie.blogs.com/artsnews/2007/03/leningrad_music.html
We Didn't Start the Fire
http://jimbuie.blogs.com/artsnews/2007/03/we_didnt_start_.html
This is a seaman's ballad:
The Downeaster Alexa
http://jimbuie.blogs.com/artsnews/2007/03/billy_joel_the_.html
Posted on November 12, 2007 8:56 PM
Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen both sort of confused my generation, I think. By the time we were born most of their funkiest, darkest, most interesting stuff was behind them.
I think most people my age first encountered Bruce through the synth heavy "Born in the U.S.A." and Billy through the awful "Storm Front" and "River of Dreams" albums.
It took us years to go deeper into their catalogs and into some of their stranger, more interesting stuff.
I agree with you about Joel coming off as an "intellectual tough guy" -- but with Elvis Costello and The Clash making genuine "angry young man" records in the same period I'd say Joel's stuff poppy records about being bummed were, at best disturbed young man music.
Posted on November 13, 2007 3:14 AM
Joel's influences were different. For one thing, he grew up in New Jersey, not England like Costello and Joe Strummer.
I think Costello was more genuine than the Clash in terms of angry cred. It's difficult to tell during the punk movement what was real and what was formula. Joel was the original angry young man, predating punk and both Costello and Strummer.
Posted on November 13, 2007 7:56 AM
I find Dylan angrier than Joel -- but not as easy on the ears.
Posted on November 13, 2007 9:25 AM
I think Joel's songs are often cast in a kind of melancholy-tragic tone common to musicians, poets and novelists.
"Isn't the music pretty? Isn't the story so sad? Isn't that the human condition?"
Think about F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example. The beauty of Gatsby was his shirts, his mansion, the Long Island summer. But it was all empty as he was.
"Say Goodbye to Hollywood"? Total mystery.
Posted on November 13, 2007 12:01 PM
John Lennon also hid a lot of misery behind pop:
"Help", "Run For Your Life", "Baby's in Black", "Good Morning, Good Morning", "Sexy Sadie", "Nowhere Man", etc.
Posted on November 13, 2007 5:44 PM
Sure, Billy Joel was dubbed "The Angry Young Man," and Costello was one of a set of singer-songwriters given the same tag in the UK (with Graham Parker and Joe Jackson). We could get into who was, as they say, O.G., but that could bring us back at least as far as Arthur Rimbaud, and way farther if we had the proper resources. There have always been angry young persons.
Billy Joel is a very frustrating figure for me. If you break down the subjects he's addressing (as you do, Joe, and as Chuck Klosterman has done), they seem rather arch and subversive. And yet, to my ear, the subjects he addresses are way more compelling than the way he executes them. His lyrics are downright clunky and, you're right, sometimes utterly confounding. They're dark and unusual subjects, yet he's not a good enough lyricist to spin most of those subjects into something really moving. He's composed countless very catchy melodies, yet his gift is for writing songs that sound remarkably similar to something or other that came before him, to the point of pastiche ("Tell Her About It" is his Motown song, "Uptown Girl" is his Four Seasons song, "Piano Man" is his early Dylan song, "We Didn't Start the Fire" is arguably his Springsteen song, "For the Longest Time" is his doo-wop song, and so on and so forth). He is a gifted composer, a just-ambiguous-enough lyricist, both instantly identifiable and transparent -- he is a meta-pop star. And the thing about being a meta-pop star is, you can take your experiences with depression (I read a quote from Billy Joel once where he said he tried to kill himself by swallowing furniture polish, but he ended up with only an upset stomach, farting lemon scent), failed romances and a propensity to drink too much and craft something so catchy and oddly familiar that you don't notice what he's singing about. I would partly credit the fact that his songs aren't widely recognized as "depressing" to his shortcomings as a lyricist. Interesting, isn't it?
Reminds me of a brief exchange I had with a friend's girlfriend a couple years ago:
ME: Well, as Billy Joel once said, "Honesty is such a lonely word."
SHE: Yeah, well, Billy Joel also said "heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack."
Posted on November 18, 2007 7:58 PM
I disagree with the poster who said that Billy Joel is a mediocre lyricist. If you really listen to his lesser-known songs, you will change your mind.
Almost all of this songs are about his life. "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" was written after he moved to LA to escape a bad record deal. He worked as a piano player in a bar and wrote "Piano Man" as a true story poem of his experience. He then wanted to move home to New York (he is from Long Island, not New Jersey!) and had to say goodbye to his new friends. Listen to the lyrics of "Los Angelenos" to get an idea of his opinion of LA.
Joel's earlier songs are his best work but they were never played on the radio. Sadly, he is best known for his 80's pop rock songs like "Up Town Girl" which are not his best songs and even he agrees with that!
He has a gift of writing songs about his daily experiences and inviting people to get a glimpse into his head. He was a depressed man but most artists are.
By the way, "We Didn't Start the Fire" was a song he wrote when he turned 40 and captured the headlines of events that took place through the 40 years of his life -- from 1949 to 1989 -- in chronological order. Voted as one of the worst songs ever recored by, I think, VH1, but this song is a true piece of art when you really listen to the lyrics.
As you can tell, I'm a huge fan!
Posted on February 24, 2008 6:36 PM