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The Geek Girl's Favorite: Billy Joel Songs

Five 'Piano Man' songs that are 'still rock and roll to me'

By Katie JohnsPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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Music icon Billy Joel has penned 33 Top 40 hits and crafted 12 studio albums in his career of 30+ years. He's claimed his goal in songwriting is to create songs that “meant something during the time in which I lived…and transcended that time.” With his own life as subject matter for his numerous works, fans like myself reflect the success of his goal when claiming his songs as meaning something to our own lives too. With that said, here are five of my favorite Billy Joel songs that have either impressed me, or have meant something in my life.

For some further Geek Girl reading, this article follows a list of my favorite albums, and includes more about Joel's career background, music style, cultural influence, and even a little random trivia.

1) "Matter of Trust" from 'The Bridge' album (1986)

Musically, this song has a harder rock vibe with its strong guitar lead, making it wonderfully unique to Billy Joel's discography. Lyrically, the song maintains a theme of a love relationship with an added dimension of rawness and reality, which is actually typical of the Piano Man's love songs.

“Matter of Trust” reflects on relationships burned out, broken, and ultimately riddled with lies and fakeness. At the same time, the song sings of a hopefulness that the matter of trust in a relationship is intact. While the song may reside in a love song context, to me a certain line stands out to me as lyrics relative to anything in life: “You can't go the distance with too much resistance.” Anybody who has lived enough knows well about getting anything worth having, relational or otherwise. Whatever it is takes a lot of work, effort, and passion. I could maybe even go so far as to relate the whole song to the broader context, but that discourse would be worthy of its own post. In short, a bit of life advice in its own way is what this song is to me.

2) "Vienna" from 'The Stranger' album (1977)

A girl at my siblings' baccalaureate sang this song, which is important for two reasons. One, my dad and I were lip-syncing the whole song, and two, nobody in my family else in my family seemed to understand the metaphor for life I see in it, and likely as Billy Joel himself may have intended with it.

The song's message is a bit like a “stop and smell the roses” meaning to me: “Slow down, you crazy child, you're so ambitious for a juvenile, but then if you're so smart, tell me why are you still so afraid?/Where's the fire? What's the hurry about? You better cool it off before you burn it out/You got so much to do and only so many hours in a day...slow down, you crazy child, take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while/its alright you can afford to lose a day or two/when will you realize Vienna waits for you?” This is one of my favorite songs to turn on when I'm stressed.

3) "Why Should I Worry?" from the 'Oliver & Company' soundtrack (1988)

I'm driven crazy by the fact that this song isn't purely Billy Joel's, like the others on this list! Which might be hard to believe while listening to it, given how the song has all the attitude of "Glass Houses" and all the jazz of "52nd Street." Billy Joel just has the singing credits, while Dan Hartman and Charlie Midnight have the writing credits. This might be why the song is never performed live or played on the radio to my knowledge, so it is an underrated gem to both Disney and the Piano Man!

4) "For the Longest Time" from 'An Innocent Man' album (1983)

Out of all Joel's love songs, I am most enthusiastic about this one! I think I discovered it somewhere over five years ago, sometime after a relationship ended, so I somehow found the song's hopeful theme relatable. The snappy, doo-wop style makes it really enjoyable too. Something even more impressive is that Billy Joel sung all the vocal parts of this song himself!

5) "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" from 'The Stranger' album (1977)

Many of Billy Joel's songs tell stories, and this one does so in the most musically enjoyable way possible! This song almost travels through time and tells several stories with the music changes helping the lyrics to depict scene changes as well.

The story, as per the lyrics, seem to tell of old friends meeting up at their favorite restaurant to reminisce about some former times and catch up. Between the focus of the lyrics and the music picking up the tempo in the second-third of the song, the scene at the restaurant seems to shift to the characters' personal lives, their memories, and even the lives of Brenda and Eddie, high school sweethearts who married, but didn't take the lows of married life very well and divorced. The fanfare that follows ultimately circles back to the beginning style and the setting of the Italian restaurant.

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About the Creator

Katie Johns

Random blogger and published short story writer-

https://kjohns323.wixsite.com/kjswritersblock/portfolio

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