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

Some love is just a lie of the spleen, the cold remains of what began with a passionate bean...

now it's turning into perry/loggins "Don't Fight It." Some love is just a-hearing a groove, they're shaking heads because they still aren't able to move / But that won't happen to us, 'cause it's always been a matter of trust...

btw not really clear, how is it being a matter of trust an answer to anything else in the song? trust is like faith, right? all you can really say is, i'm trusting that this bad fate won't befall our relationship. but that can't be a reason WHY they won't happen. or is the relationship itself "a matter of trust"? so because they have such good trust levels the spark will never go out? i dunno this seems like a classic billy conceptual non-sequitur to me, two things that kinda seem like they go together but don't really add up to an argument. works while you're hearing it though.

"now i can't offer you proof / but you're gonna face a moment of truth" makes him sound like kyle reese.

some love is just alive in the knees
a soap impression of his wife who up and made him eat bees
but that won't happen to me
cause i'm ready at the shake of the keys

or is the relationship itself "a matter of trust"? so because they have such good trust levels the spark will never go out?

i think that's basically it. i like this lyric. there are a few lines along the way that don't quite add up, but yeah, he's saying we'll get through our doubts as long as you trust me and i trust you. right?

This is one of those cases where no one remembers the host album but everyone remembers "A Matter of Trust."

sam shepard's last great play, "a lie of the mind," opened off-broadway seven months before the bridge came out. it features a horrific act of domestic violence and it "may be its author's most romantic play," frank rich wrote in his nytimes review.

I mean, even people that trust each other can find the flame fades after a while. Although I guess, the trust will help them develop a relationship not dependent on that.... I dunno, feel like some of the anxieties and overconfidences of a still-youngish relationship are on display here. Doesn't ruin the song for me - I had similar "huh?" feelings with "My Life," a song I love - just along with the excess of stanzas it makes it feel a little unfocused.

TBF, I don't even remember the name of the song from a few days ago that finished off GHI&II.

I remember Billy jumping through that portal in slo-mo.

WHADDANIGHTASTEELYUHHHHHHHH

feel like some of the anxieties and overconfidences of a still-youngish relationship are on display here.

otm

no one remembers the host album

i'm not sure cyndi lauper remembers the host album

im sure your a werewolf
we both have a sherrif
bees live with two lungs
when the hole that you’re itching was wrong

This schlock was on the alarm radio every time I woke up during this time. Particularly annoying aspects of the song include the countdown mentioned above, the forced sibilence of “you can’t go the distanccccce with too much resistanccccce” and the overly earnest pleading “for god sake don’t shut me out” which has no place in a pop song. Don’t go away mad Billy, just go away.

the overly earnest pleading “for god sake don’t shut me out” which has no place in a pop song.

it doesn't?

Ain't too proud to plead, baby baby, please don't leave me, don't you go.

i like it. keeps making me think of "back to the lake" by GBV though.

for god's sake, don't shut earnestness out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDjFI3kbxuo

Modern Woman, the album's lead single, peaked at #10 (#7 Adult contemporary) with some Top 40 performance elsewhere. It was also featured in the Midler/DeVito/ZAZ comedy Ruthless People; if you want a bit of the spirit of that, this fan-video combines a teeny bit of footage from the movie with "live in the studio" footage from the promotional featurette Building the Bridge and wackily sped-up clips from the "Matter of Trust" video. Reportedly disliked by Joel, it was not featured on Greatest Hits III and thus not anthologized until the My Lives box set.

I've never heard it until now and it's... kinda neat!

Really? It stinks. The synth set my teeth on edge as much as the condescension.

This sounds like everything that is generally hated about big 80s big pop/rock production: shrill, ugly and impersonal.

Haha maybe I'm hearing it as something funkier and weirder than it is because it seems like such a left turn from Billy. When it started up in my headphones I was like "is he trying to do a Was (Not Was) song??"

wow this is some terrible shit, like Police Academy 3: Back in Training soundtrack garbage, though it's good to hear this stuff as an antidote to 80s nostalgia, because this was what a lot of the shit actually was, dudes with terrible glasses jumping around behind Yamaha keyboards wearing knockoff Sonny Crockett clothes.... probably the my least favorite song so far

I know we're not there yet, but like I did eight albums ago, I'm calling foreshadowing:

https://i.imgur.com/OHQzPOw.gif

For a taste of how execrable mid '80s soundtracks could be, check out Mick Jagger's collaboration with Daryl Hall (!) and David Stewart for the same movie. It was supposed to be the hit (it wasn't).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cohCR3rUh0

one of those times where weird al's parody instincts and read on the charts of the original song seem to have failed him

https://i.imgur.com/WZRYWkR.gif

Rock and roll just used to be for kicks / And nowadays it's politics / And after 1986 what else could be new

the lyric, i mean... he's trying to extend his givin'-advice schtick but obviously his feminism is incompletely formed and the woman is seen entirely as Other whose significance is as a quest object for the rather hopeless-sounding protag. taken out of context, this is kind of otm tho as a description of masculine insecurity in the face of a woman who doesn't require him or his jumbled readings of her appearance ("the quiet type who's into heavy metal"??):

You want to make a move
But you feel so inferior
Cause under that exterior
Is someone who's free

The Heat Is Not Quite On

actually, this does sound like he's aping Howard Jones.

I'm almost willing to concede he went for a little Steely Dan tone on the bridge @ 1:55

Didn't work out the same.

i like that little sax break @1:55. and then when the piano comes back in, alone, for two bars i think maybe he's about to break into "on broadway" or something. i haven't seen "ruthless people" in a long time but i remember quite enjoying it. i bet they paid a good amount of cash for this sync. this may be the most '80s thing ever. not quite as terrible as i remembered it. but pretty close.

I can't find the video, but I distinctly remember this song playing over the Moonlighting episode where Maddie Hayes gets into an elevator wearing her neon-colored Reebok hightops.

True story: as a kid, Billy Joel and Moonlighting-era Bruce Willis used to remind me greatly of each other. I'm pretty sure Die Hard is what put an end to that.

Man, if Billy had starred in Die Hard...

Someone please write a Glimpses-style speculative sci-fi novel imagining an alternate history where Billy was offered, and took, Die Hard and Bruce did Oliver and Co. and how the landscape of popular culture (and the world?) would look now as a result.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/BruceWillis_-_ReturnOfBruno.jpg

True story: as a kid, Billy Joel and Moonlighting-era Bruce Willis used to remind me greatly of each other. I'm pretty sure Die Hard is what put an end to that.

― iCloudius (cryptosicko),

"Big Man on Mulberry Street" also used.

https://i.imgur.com/NMjpBZN.jpg

Ooh, pitch for a road movie: Billy and Bruce. Car breaks down in Vegas and they go on the road, etc., etc.

I never thought about the parallels in their careers. "tough guy" image, started in NYC, huge commercial success but not much critical, terribly misguided ventures into each other's fields of art

In what universe is Billy a tough guy?

Maybe you mean because he wears sunglasses?

It's part of the image he's tried to put on, maybe not consistently. The wild boys were his friends, he ran with a dangerous crowd, etc

amateur boxing, walking through Bed-Stuy alone, riding a motorcycle (in the rain, even!)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfH2e9EYeQA

Baby Grand, the first of two duets with "We Are the World" co-singers, closes out the first side. Released as the fourth and final single from the album, it peaked at #75 (Adult Contemporary #3). Outside of the US it seems to have only gotten released in Australia (where it peaked at #78). The video is about what you'd expect.

Apart from some revealing comments on "A Matter of Trust," this song occupies the bulk of Billy's attention when reflecting on the album thirty years later. The short version is that, in this account, Ray Charles had asked Quincy Jones to ask Phil Ramone about performing a Billy Joel song. "And when he comes into the room, you know. He looks exactly like Ray Charles. It's overwhelming, like the Washington Monument walking into your house."

https://img.discogs.com/TDMckIa-Iflz2NfMeV9m5JzJ3LY=/fit-in/596x596/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2568636-1298581651.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/lxnRE-TCZpjCxl38CoEBFUjQqw4=/fit-in/576x578/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2568636-1298581670.jpeg.jpg

These attempts are often embarrassments. "Baby Grand" is not.

also: a far superior piano-as-metaphor than goddamn "Ebony and Ivory."

Yeah, this is nice! The most focused Billy's felt to me on this album, and the Charles-by-numbers writing and arrangement is the right call... makes it sound both like a 70s Billy Joel record, and like a minor Charles single from his first heyday. Anyway, if you have Ray Charles in the studio, you get out of the way and let him do what he's good at, and boy does he sound good on this.

It's an alright song. I agree it harks back to 70's Billy, but I don't think it has the same memorability. I've heard this song at least a dozen times, since I own Vol 3, but the only line that really sticks out to me is the "minor keys" one. The melody isn't that sticky either. But I will admit it sounds nice when it's playing, classy even

Modern Woman = I don't think I can do this anymore