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

I suppose we can say he tears into these cliches with energy, but, like Whitney Houston's "So Emotional," the least emotional of #1 singles, "I Go to Extremes" doesn't go to any extremes.

Huh. I think the delivery of the earlier verses is generally calm, with the later choruses adding contrasting intensity (in the form of gruntiness).

Like I alluded to, I think this song has some of his laziest ever lyrics - saying the same thing ten different ways, little specificity. The music itself is fine, kind of bland, like an 80's tv show theme song (maybe specifically "Perfect Strangers")

Fairly generic, but livelier than a lot of the Bridge/Storm Front material we've heard thus far, and I like his melodic delivery of the opening lyric.

oh hey I remember this — i legit enjoy this one.
weird flashback of Mum being pissed off abt something & blasting this while vaccuuming <3

okay, that makes me like it a little more!

really doesn't do much for me though. the band has just been flattened out into a relentless and monotonous rhythm section to back up joel's vocal. karaoke rock. the hook's a C+ though the verse is decent enough. and once again, it's too damn long without enough to say (tho at least we do have clearly distinguished verse, chorus, and bridge parts).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSER85bXq2c

Shameless closes side one of Storm Front; Billy has claimed it was somehow inspired by Jimi Hendrix, but I'll leave that one up to you. It got to #40 on Adult Contemporary on what I think must be airplay alone, since it does not seem to have had a physical single release in the US. Here's a sleeve from an Australian promo release:

https://img.discogs.com/BXGgvJYXQa72gp3ViOMeZHCaGGo=/fit-in/600x593/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7331950-1439102162-4121.jpeg.jpg

However, it's best known through Garth Brooks's cover (with Trisha Yearwood on backing vocals), which appeared on the staggering, 14x-platinum Ropin' the Wind in 1991. As that album's second single, it the seventh of Garth's eighteen #1s on the Country charts. Unfortunately, Garth is one of those artists who isn't on Spotify and keeps a tight lid on YouTube leaks of studio cuts... so I can't link it just now. Wikipedia provides this useful text from a greatest-hits album's liner notes:

"Shameless" was the longest shot we took with a song. I was talked into becoming a member of a CD club...you know, the 40,000 CD's for a penny deal. (...) I was on the road for six months with no one to check the mail and came home to find six compact discs in my mailbox. Storm Front by Billy Joel was one of them. I hadn't listened to Billy Joel since the late seventies, probably since Glass Houses. I fell in love with the album and fell back in love with Billy Joel's music. One of his songs really captured me, a song called "Shameless." I kept watching it, and when he did not release it as a single, we contacted his people in the hopes that we could cut it. His people sent us a letter acknowledging that he knew who I was and was very honored that I was cutting it. That was quite a compliment for me then, as it is now. My hope is that Billy, as writer, hears this cut and says, "Yeah, man, the guy's got balls."

Billy discusses his feelings on country music, and does two or three impressions on the piano, in this 1995 clip.

https://img.discogs.com/VXDg2K5jJ_dRxOPMK0Taz8asJaQ=/fit-in/600x524/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-4840932-1377263088-8230.jpeg.jpg

oh wait, duh, adult contemporary is always an airplay chart anyway

Brooks' cover >>> BJ's version. Brooks sounds like a better version of Billy Joel than Billy Joel does.

catching up:

“the downeaster ‘alexa’”: i’ve never heard this song before and it’s immediately a top five billy joel song. beautiful composition, beautifully arranged, beautifully sung

“i go to extremes”: i REMEMBER this song. idk why it’s this i recognize from my early childhood and not “we didn’t start the fire,” possibly one had more ac radio reign than the other (that’s all my parents listened to)? anyway, i don’t hate it, though everything about it is merely serviceable. it’s too long but idk my favorite parts of the song are the piano manning

“shameless”: contrasted with “downeaster alexa,” billy sings this song kinda terribly. brooks’ arrangement also has so much more breathing room and is generally much less....Intense. but it’s a pretty good song. didn’t expect to enjoy this much of storm front!

i remember saying i thought "i go to extremes" had vanished from radio and someone (alfred?) saying they heard it all the time to this day - maybe "fire," as something of a novelty song, declined a bit in AC airplay after its initial run while that one stayed around?

yeah I still hear "I Go to Extremes" on A/C radio while "Fire" has vanished.

also, dude apologizing for being a shitty boyfriend (whatever else "i go to extremes" might be about) is a pretty solid AC theme. i bet Delilah fields a lot of rambling, sweaty requests for it.

I grew up listening to the BJ version of "Shameless", and I only just heard the Garth Brooks version for the first time (though I could kind of predict what it would sound like). I think I prefer BJ's version instrumentally, and Garth's version vocally. Garth seems more at home with the melody, whereas Billy is awkward on a few lines. Both versions are good songs

Good song to do at karaoke, btw.

89 is a rough year, the mannerisms and bluster of 80s pop is so overblown yet somehow neutered and charmless by then

"I Go to Extremes" - Forgot about this one, even though it's a good song for what it is. Thought it was more of a Bridge-era song.

In some places I hear a bit of Motowny/Spectorish flourish in the vocal melody. - Remember when we were picking out the Ronnie song from each album? About 100 years ago?

"Shameless" - Heard the Garth version first. If you haven't heard it and can't find it, I'll tell ya, it sounds a hell lot like what you just heard here, except with Garth Brooks singing. Same way that his version of "Hard Luck Woman" is virtually indistinguishable from the Kiss original.

But that said, I do have fond memories of "Shameless" - especially the year I won the Nutt Butt Hutt fantasy football trophy. There was like a $175 prize and everything!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OZnzVMWJ4M

I miss the Ronnie songs. While Billy's tendency towards pastiche obviously long predated Phil Ramone's collaboration, I suspect the latter played a big role in executing/synthesizing those urges in what (through Glass Houses anyway) remained a fairly tight recording process of a handful of full-band takes to nail the basic tracks of each song. (I'm thinking of the vocal effects console with buttons for Billy labeled "Elvis," etc.). I wonder how much of the Storm Front material Billy heard in his head as taking inspiration from so-and-so, but which lost this somehow in the recording process... like he and Mick were unable to translate these sources into the idiom of late-80s rock without just smothering them under the standard Foreigner operating procedure. Hence, perhaps, the baffling invocation of Jimi with regard to this song - what??

Never knowingly heard the Garth version and, to my knowledge, never heard the Billy original either. Pretty boring.

I mean aren’t there a hundred and one artists that are more worthy of your time?

Here's that cover by the Oklahoman.

I mean aren’t there a hundred and one artists that are more worthy of your time?

― calstars, Friday, November 24, 2017

what?

calstar not everyone's built for the streets it's ok go home

garth's is better; thanks pplains. not wild about the effect on his voice, but the New Country arrangement has aged better here i think. just as artificial a studio creation maybe, but goes down smoother. not a bad song really; a little generic maybe but cool that it connected with an audience (or that garth was just that unstoppable at that point, idk). the most successful cover of a billy joel song, i'd say.

calstars, you may be right. We may be crazy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r45dbYnldMs

Leningrad opens side two with a ballad in a classic Joel style. It was inspired by a real-life Soviet clown named Viktor Razinov, who'd attended all six of the Moscow and St. Petersburg shows, and the Cold War reflections prompted by that touring experience. It was released as a single in Europe, complete with a video; it peaked in the teens in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands.

https://img.discogs.com/vdmMXms-ccvYIU6RnR4xW3tCaoc=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6222399-1414089675-7562.jpeg.jpg

Did we skip a song? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Front_(album)

Leningrad is a pretty song, and some of the lyrics have really stuck with me. I knew it must have been inspired by his Russia tour but had no idea it was based on a real person he met - the lyrical detail makes it feel personal either way. The B-section sounds really fraught as he describes the war from his childhood POV, it's a nice effect. The only part I can take or leave is the ending, maybe a little overblown

Oh gosh, we totally did! Sorry about that. Amazed it hasn't happened before. I'll swing back and do that one tomorrow...ooops.

He's telling an actual story here--and I don't doubt his sincerity--which automatically makes this vastly preferable to a certain Sting abomination that 80s songs about Russia will always inevitably bring to mind, but both the music and the singing are turgid to the point of lifelessness.

it is pretty funny how much better this song is than "Russians"

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

Storm Front actually opens side two, with swagger. The Memphis Horns join, along with Lenny Pickett (saxophonist with a million studio credits, best known as a longstanding member of the Saturday Night Live Band), Richard Marx (among the backing vocals), and Mick Jones (on guitar).

Exhausted 80s boomer Soul.

Billy Joel in the wild: "An Innocent Man" in the men's room of a Culver's in Chaska, MN

how were the acoustics? did u sing along? :D

the Muzak volume level was weirdly loud like at least double conventional levels

"80s boomer soul" - yes. i wonder how many tracks like this got recorded in the wake of "sledgehammer" and "roll with it." i also wonder if the managers of acts like billy had to have hard, sit-down talks with them, explaining that while they were still popular, and even popular with some teenagers, they were no longer popular with the teenagers and it was time to start taking that Adult Contemporary exposure seriously.

terrible song, it's funny you mention the Memphis horns I was just gonna say how terrible the digital keyboard horn sounds were but I guess that's the "magic" of the time's big budget production.

Leningrad is lovely, seems like Billy gets a little inspired on songs that have a historical or character angle (Downeaster, WDSTT, Leningrad) otherwise he sounds pretty used up on this album, which I think is actually maybe worse than the Bridge so far on balance. though the highs are higher. props to Garth's A&R skills for recognizing and realizing the potential of "Shameless" to be a huge hit and future standard. this version sounds muddled and forgettable.

but yeah shit like Storm Front has me thinking well calstars has a point lol

BJ in 1990 was my first adult concert, the seventh and final sow of a remarkable multiday stint in Miami. I wasn't a fan -- my buddy and I went cuz it was An Event. The show opened with "Storm Front."

Storm Front is my favourite Joel album outside his 1976-1983 peak. The good stuff is pretty solid (Leningrad, Downeaster) but the bad stuff is terrible (When In Rome, That's Not Her Style).

pretty much

Taking sides: Billy Job vs Blow Joel

TBH, pretty funky for a song called Storm Front!

No, not funky. In the least. What are you smoking?

this seems informed by "Sledgehammer" but way more plodding and basic

this song is not even in the same fucking league as Sledgehammer

"80s boomer soul" - yes. i wonder how many tracks like this got recorded in the wake of "sledgehammer" and "roll with it." i also wonder if the managers of acts like billy had to have hard, sit-down talks with them, explaining that while they were still popular, and even popular with some teenagers, they were no longer popular with the teenagers and it was time to start taking that Adult Contemporary exposure seriously.

― gimme the beet poison, free my soul (Doctor Casino),

cf. “We’ll Be Together”

fyi last night I had a dream that I had grown Bill Joel circa 1979 hair. My wife didn't like it. Then Billy Joel came over to tell me he was breaking up with me (?) and we couldn't be friends anymore.

so thanks a lot ILM