Culture Trip stands with Black Lives Matter. Written in , this moody, psychedelic ballad tells the true story of a Long Island drug dealer and his teenage clientele, who turned to heroin to escape the boredom of suburbia. Even a complete Billy Joel novice would recognize this song from the first blows of a harmonica. The partially autobiographical ballad chronicles the experiences of a lounge singer as he performs in the same dive bar night after night, profiling patrons who dream of better lives and wondering how a performer like him could end up in such an establishment. Legend surrounds this hit about a young man attempting to convince his girlfriend to have premarital sex. When Joel brought The Stranger tour to St.

‘Piano Man’


14. ‘Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)’ (1976)
As a New York-based singer-songwriter in the early '70s, he cut his first record, which nobody heard. He then relocated to Los Angeles, rebooted, had a minor hit and then returned home, where he built a career on two great pop albums with jazz undertones. He then shifted gears again, releasing a string of records — a rock 'n' roll one, a politically conscious one, one that paid tribute to the music he grew up on — before halting his recording career following the release of his fourth No. Our list of the Top 10 Billy Joel Songs focuses on his defining decade between It was written as sort of a fable, a futuristic look at a metropolis inching toward total collapse. After Sept. Early in his career, Joel wrote a lot about what he knew — which was basically himself see No. He also penned lengthier and more ambitious narratives back before he began winning Grammys.
13. 'The Longest Time' (1983)
Billy Joel fans know that his catalog is extensive. More casual fans might not even realize that a hit they love is actually Billy Joel on the end of the speaker. Here are 20 of the best songs from Billy Joel's career. It is a fictional version of Billy Joel's experiences as a piano player and lounge singer for six months at the Executive Room in Los Angeles. The characters in the song are all based on real people. The line, "the waitress is practicing politics," refers to his first wife Elizabeth Weber.
Billy Joel is the closest thing Madison Square Garden has to a sure thing — certainly more than the Knicks or the Rangers or the Liberty. By the measure of hit-making, his stats are staggering. They used to beat him up for his perceived lack of edge. Lately, though — like every artist from a generation back — he is undergoing a critical reassessment, despite some dissenters. I am in his camp. I grew up right off the Jersey Turnpike, halfway between Levittown and Allentown, during the years when he was on the radio every day. People who write paeans to the suburbs, on topics that sit on the cusp between white-collar and blue-collar, are unfashionable these days. But the ranking draws on 30 years of soaking in these songs, plus multiple repeat playings of every one over the past three months. That said, appreciation does not mean blindness, and Joel himself would agree that not every song on every album catches fire though he did light it, and we tried to fight it. A close listening to the Joel-ian canon reveals a couple of generous handfuls of greatness, forgotten cuts that deserve to be resurfaced, familiar hits that have aged poorly, and flat-out clunkers.