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

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Man, people had weirdly shaped dicks back then.

Interestingly, I looked up what year Trojan condoms became available (just to validate this song's accuracy, lol) and the answer is: 1916!

In my youth, there was a popular "meme" (avant la lettre) stating that it was ironic for Trident to be a brand of gum because trident means "three teeth."

Further, it was ironic that a brand of condoms was named Ramses, because Ramesses had at least 80 children.

One might strain this joke further by noting that "Trojan" is similarly undercutting because it evokes the Trojan horse - something that seemed harmless on the way in, but once it was in it broke open and lots of men spilled out.

Magnum sounds like a gun that shoots bullets.

Good one! Or, alternatively, a large champagne bottle that spews uncontrollably when popped open.

I just realized it's "my old man's Trojans" probably because Dad would be responsibly non-monogamous by bringing rubbers to the cathouse or his city girlfriend.

Or, wait, it's before the Pill. he just needed them at home.

xpost

or mom was too trad to go on the pill, and Daddy Joel didn't need anymore rugrats to feed

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Greatest Hits - Volume I & Volume II was released September 2, 1985, and would become Billy Joel's most successful album. To date, per Wiki, it "has been certified double diamond by the RIAA, selling over 11.5 million copies (23 million units) and is tied with Pink Floyd's The Wall and Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV for third most certified album of all time in the US.[3]" Elsewhere, they estimate its US sales as being roughly tied with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, making it the 43rd-or-so best-selling US release of all time, but obviously there's some fuzziness in a lot of these numbers, particularly for older albums.

As previously discussed, the comp features the majority of Joel's US chart singles up to that point, with some variations in tracklist depending on pressing and market. It's quite a lineup, to put it mildly, including nearly all of the songs for which he will probably still be remembered a few decades from now. Where short versions of singles were available, they were generally used ("Goodnight Saigon" seems to be the exception), then replaced with the long ones for a 1998 remaster. If you listen to it on Spotify it's further altered, with outright wrong versions of songs (the studio "Say Goodbye To Hollywood," for Pete's sake!). You can read about most of this confusing history here.

Left out of the canonical release but later restored are "Honesty," "Captain Jack," "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant," "The Entertainer," and "She's Got A Way (Live)." As just mentioned, "Keeping the Faith" and "An Innocent Man" got held over for Volume III, which didn't appear until 1997 and barely cracked single platinum, probably hurting those songs' cultural presence a bit. Totally excluded are the lower-hanging chart entries "Worse Comes To Worst," "Travelin' Prayer," and "Sometimes A Fantasy"; and the non-charting or non-US singles "The Ballad of Billy the Kid," "James," "Until the Night," "All For Leyna," "You're My Home (Live)," "This NIght," and understandably, the original "She's Got A Way" and "Say Goodbye to Hollywood."

I bother listing all these because, per industry practice, the set does include two new singles which total about ten minutes of music and thus block out space that could have been given to roughly three other songs. The presence of "The Stranger," not a US single but an airplay hit (and big in Japan), also poses the possibility of including other fan favorites or things that deserved a bigger audience than they got. The new songs were both successful singles in their own right, though, so it's as easy to argue that they helped the album's success, as to say it'd have been better to save them as backup singles for the next LP. I'll queue up the first one of them in a second, but I'll wrap this post by posing this weekend's question: what would you have done?

Side One

1. "Piano Man" 5:36
2. "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" (Live) 3:54
3. "New York State of Mind" (w/ subbed sax solo) 6:02
4. "The Stranger" 5:07
5. "Just the Way You Are" 3:36

Side Two

1. "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" 3:28
2. "Only the Good Die Young" 3:53
3. "She's Always a Woman" 3:17
4. "My Life" 3:51
5. "Big Shot" 3:43
6. "You May Be Right" 4:09

Side Three

1. "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" 2:54
2. "Don't Ask Me Why" 2:57
3. "Pressure" 3:15
4. "Allentown" 3:48
5. "Goodnight Saigon" 7:00

Side Four

1. "Tell Her About It" 3:35
2. "Uptown Girl" 3:15
3. "The Longest Time" 3:36
4. "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" 4:48
5. "The Night Is Still Young" 5:28

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLVTrD32Rs8

You're Only Human (Second Wind) is Billy's interpretation of ska and an effort to speak to teens about suicide. Released as a single (with a trimmed-out sax solo shedding a half a minute), it hit #9 in the US, #2 on Adult Contemporary, and charted in a couple of other markets. I'm not sure I've ever heard it outside of this comp - maybe his most forgotten top-tenner? It even had a video, with a harmonica-playing Billy taking up the Clarence role from It's A Wonderful Life.

Per Wiki, "Joel donated all royalties from the song to the National Committee for Youth Suicide Prevention," which I think would also include a slice of that big Greatest Hits pie. I guess the "We Are The World" spirit rubbed off on him.

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good lord, this video

Jesus, this song. First time I heard it, I think I actually spit out my drink the first time those abysmal synth horns show up. Then there's the lyrics, which are the musical equivalent of telling a depressed person to "just be happy". Let's just say, I feel like this song fails on a lot of levels, though I do get it stuck in my head a lot

I heard it on the radio a few times into the late '90s, but otherwise, yeah, it's gone. I hear the next album's "This is the Time" a lot more.

The YOU'RE ONLY HUMAN OOH OOH bits are a major annoyance. Was he aiming for the Howard Jones positivity market?

And yes, the video is something else

I had convinced myself the OOH OOH stuff was some bizarre attempt at borrowing certain aspects of Graceland but the timeline obviously doesn't work for that.

I wish he'd tried to write the troubled-teen material over our next song, which might make it feel less like a clueless "just be happy" pep-talk. You really don't get much of a sense of Billy's own experience with depression from this one.

I have a good music crit friend who adores the next one -- it's his favorite Joel song.

Well, he's allowed to make his share of mistakes.

j/k, it has its qualities. As does this one, really - the "til that old second wind comes alo-hoong" bit is pretty hooky and it's kind of an interesting/different sound for Billy. I just wish it was more artificial and synthy, like a McCartney II track or something. Forget the harmonica - break out that dear old dusty Moog! As it is, it's kind of in the uncanny valley of Reagan-era positivity pop. It sounds like an audition to do the theme song for America's Funniest Home Videos.

The only affectionate connection that I have for this song (aside from its presence on the GH set that was such a beloved staple of my childhood) is that I'm pretty sure my father once used it in one of the season's-end video compilations that he used to put together for the track and field team he coached--cause running...second wind...get it? Other than that, ugh, the sonics on this are just ghastly.

lol

"songs parents used to soundtrack videos" would be a good thread imo

"Joel donated all royalties from the song to the National Committee for Youth Suicide Prevention," which I think would also include a slice of that big Greatest Hits pie. I guess the "We Are The World" spirit rubbed off on him.

I once believed in causes too.

It sounds like an audition to do the theme song for America's Funniest Home Videos.

Completely lol @ imagined montage in my head right now.

Thanks for the Batsignal, Dr C!!!

I have never seen this video before & ... i have notes

Is it bad that the intro makes me wish they’d just use the suicide scene from Saturday Night Fever?

If 5 o clock shadow BJ in a trenchcoat accosted me with a harmonica & sang about not killing myself I would kill myself out of sheer secondhand embarrassment

My skeleton wants to leave my body for that poor kid & Billy’s awkward shuffle

WHY DID HE NOT SHAVE. He looks like a pedo

leave the trenchcoats to strippers, guys with knockoff watches & flashers

i do kinda like this song, it reminds me of my Mum’s aerobics classes

:D :D :D

...and thus the VH-1 aesthetic was born.

Yo didn't BJ try to kill himself at one point? I just googled it - he did, in his early 20s. "You're Only Human" sounds glib, but I've been depressed and I've never gotten close to putting a gun in my mouth. So that's one slice of cornpone I'll give him. Also want to note that "Keeping the Faith" makes me cry for some reason - I think it's that the song is nostalgic in a very literal sense: he's straining in every line to hit the notes; the bitterness of the memory fading shading the sweetness of the recall. I dunno, it's kind of maudlin, but I like maudlin a lot of the time.

yeah he did try. luckily a trenchcoat-wearing harmonica player talked him out of it - they made a music video about the experience

it'd be interesting to compare this to "tomorrow is today" from the debut, also a reflection on that experience but with a different audience/message in mind and obviously miles away musically.

idk, i've never been at that point so maybe this song has connected with some people and helped them out, but to me this feels like a PSA, billy's sense of having been through it has been washed away by interviews where he distances himself from it (what a dumbass kid i was, ha ha.....). he's not singing about depression or suicide but just about "mistakes" and second winds. clearly he was hoping to find the same good-advice footing as on "tell her about it" but imo he missed the mark.

God that's horrible, especially with the video. Never liked anything he did from this point on.

that weird, I had totally blocked that song from my memory but it was really popular at the time

what a weird song. i love the totally synthetic backing, it's like a less-complicated scritti track

oh my fucking god the video

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Wings of Desire (1987, dir. Wim Wenders)

The kid is cute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs8yvzYwQOU

The Night Is Still Young is the other 'bonus' song, this time an epic drama of aging and sex. The video is again a must-see period piece, albeit for different reasons. The single version, trimmed down from 5:27 to 4:08 and backed (oddly) with "Summer, Highland Falls," peaked at #34 (#13 Adult Contemporary), and has never been anthologized in its own right.

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A meta note: tomorrow, nearly four months into our shared Joel adventure, we will cross into what I've been thinking of as his discography's final phase. In the first thirteen years of his solo career, he released nine studio albums, but in the last ten, there were only three: The Bridge, Storm Front, and River of Dreams. There'll be some miscellaneous material in between, and following RoD a couple of B-sides and some kind of roundup of covers provided for soundtracks, etc., but basically that's the remainder of his (pop) discography.

The slowdown corresponded with huge world tours and other activities, of course, and these albums were very successful (the latter two hit #1). But somehow I've always had the impression he was running out of steam, and I've never listened to these records in full before. I do know a handful of songs I like from them, and I suspect there must also be buried gems, so I'm looking forward to delving into this phase! But basically, with certain items consolidated into a single day's listening, we should be all wrapped up in another month, month and a half tops.

Yeah. The Bridge is his first theme-free record since 1980 if not The Stranger.

Like I wrote yesterday, a certain rock critic loves 'The Night is Still Young' more than any other Joel song.

Also, say goodbye to Phil Ramone from here on (I believe).

Nope, he helmed The Bridge. It's Storm Front that punts Ramone, along with Stegmeyer and Javors. Liberty sticks around, but then only shows up for like, one track on River of Dreams.

Totally forgot The Bridge even existed! Thought we were on to Storm Front next.

I kept up through Storm Front - it was among my favorite tapes - but he utterly lost me with River of Dreams.

So, "The Night Is Still Young"... the weird, low delivery on the verses of this does make it stand out in his catalog. I think it also meant that I never really paid attention to the lyrics in the way I did for the bigger, melodic, confidently-belted hook-every-five-seconds kinda songs. There are some good moments - "Young enough to still see the passionate boy that I used to be / Old enough to say I got a good look at the other side" is an interesting way to open (wonder how the "passionate boy" relates to the "angry young man"); "I can see a time coming when I'm gonna throw my suitcase out" is evocative, and "Rock and roll music was the only thing I ever gave a damn about" gives him one more chance to make a clean retirement after An Innocent Man's look back at those rock and roll days.

Some of the rest feels a bit boilerplate power-ballad, but the main issue is that there's something about Billy's entire steez that doesn't make me want a "keep makin' love to you" song out of him. That said, the chorus and the OHHHHH OH OH OHH OHHHH stuff has gotten stuck in my head more than once over the course of this Billy season so I guess that's something.

All that being said, and again not really knowing what we're in for on the next record, but I'd be really surprised if it was so chockablock with greatness that it couldn't have absorbed these two songs. The greatest hits needed "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" more than this. Then I dunno....open side one with "Travelin' Prayer," find a place for "Honesty" or "Sometimes a Fantasy." Any of those would make a better and more representative set than capping Side 4 with ten minutes of awkward mid-80s sonic adjustments. I can at least see the logic in excluding "An Innocent Man" and "Keepin' the Faith," 'cause otherwise you're practically asking all the people who bought An Innocent Man to buy it over again.

It wasn't until you updated the Greatest Hits poll that I realized, wait, I've been offering these same old bon mots for years now.

But that said, this is still sadly true. Hope I hear some more gems I've overlooked.

The Today Show had a full week of interviews with Billy Joel when this comp came out, with the highlight being the world premiere of HIS NEW VIDEO.

My heart dropped a little the first time I saw "You're Only Human (Second WInd)" and even though "Matter of Trust" was the jam later on, it was around this time that I started moving toward the Beatles and metal.

― pplains, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 9:48 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like "A Matter of Trust" a lot -- the song from this era that still gets lots of airplay -- but I'll have more to say in a few days.

sorry i need to do this

WHOOOAAOHHHOHHHHH
OHHHOOOHHH
OHHHOOHHHOOOOHHOOH
WHILETHENIGHTISTILLYOUUUUUNG

Feel we’re gonna need a BJ Line Readings / Vocal Schtick poll at the end of this.

Special category for finding just the right extra syllable to add: "dangerous ker-rowd," "chev-uh-ro-lay," etc.