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

BRIDGE - Middle age ennui

STORM FRONT - deterioration and death

NEXT ALBUM... Journey into the spiritual hereafter.

...

COLD SPRING HARBOR - When you're young and your voice sounds like a chipmunk.

sorta realizing that the quality of albums across billy's career is pretty even! once the production settled with ramone, each is about half weighted with great songs, half weighted with filler or non-descript whatever. the only ones where great songs outweight the filler imo are glass houses and innocent man, which are incidentally the albums on which billy seems most energized and enthusiastic about what he's doing

"and so it goes" is an incredible song, my favorite closer that's not "keeping the faith." he so rarely lands an album well that it feels even more remarkable

Billy's unofficial cover of Bette Midler's "The Rose."

The Rose is better than any Billy Joel song imo

I would put The Stranger on the list of "majority good" albums, but it's close. Basically if he'd released half as many albums (one every other year rather than one a year), and only used the good songs he'd have an incredible and easy to recommend discography. But that's not how the business was structured back then, sadly.

like idk check this out. assume that any missing favorites become sweet b-sides and that any too-long running times are fixed by reining in some instrumental passages a la the single mixes of some of the big songs. some of these are insane sequences and obviously we're in fanfic territory but idk it's a pretty good haul of songs and most folks would not know to miss "rosalinda's eyes" (though i would).

Piano Spring Harbor

Travelin' Prayer
Everybody Loves You Now
Why Judy Why
Falling of the Rain
Captain Jack

She's Got A Way
Piano Man
You Look So Good To Me
You're My Home
Stop In Nevada
Tomorrow Is Today

Turnstile Serenade

Say Goodbye To Hollywood
Summer, Highland Falls
James
The Mexican Connection
New York State of Mind

Prelude/Angry Young Man
The Entertainer
Root Beer Rag
I've Loved These Days
Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)

52nd Stranger

Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)
The Stranger
Honesty
Just The Way You Are
Stiletto

Big Shot
My Life
Vienna
Only The Good Die Young
She's Always A Woman
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant

Glass Curtains

You May Be Right
Sometimes A Fantasy
Don't Ask Me Why
It's Still Rock 'n' Roll To Me
Close to the Borderline

Sleeping with the Television On
Laura
All For Leyna
She's Right On Time
Pressure

("Allentown" and "Goodnight Saigon" debut on the Greatest Hits, becoming Billy's "September" and "Slip Slidin' Away" respectively.)

An Innocent Man

(leave alone. if you really hate "easy money" or w/e, just but reach into the vaults for whatever pretty-good album track I cut above that could be passably reinvented in the style of, say, Elvis, Lesley Gore, or a young Stevie Wonder...)

Bridge of Storms

Running On Ice
I Go To Extremes
This Is The Time
The Downeaster "Alexa"
And So It Goes

A Matter of Trust
We Didn't Start the Fire
That's Not Her Style
Baby Grand
The Night Is Still Young

"And So It Goes" is one of those tunes that I heard a lot in summer '90 and it's disappeared.

Meanwhile....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccx6Osu1x34

House of Blue Light was the b-side to "We Didn't Start the Fire." Not to be confused with the classic "House of Blue Lights," it did not appear on an album until the My Lives box, which also dubbed in the harmonica heard in the YouTube above. The harmonica-free single version is out there on YouTube but only in awful lo-fi quality. I trust you can live without it.

Dr., I applaud your alternate-universe Jilly Boel who had a career of surer hits but fewer records. I believe I would like that artist quite a lot. You are also right that the industry wasn't set up for that kind of career (and I am not sure Our Billy would have been satisfied with that release schedule anyway).

(Or... maybe not. Maybe when presented with the album "Glass Curtains," might we have just recalibrated our expectations and liked our favorite few and snoozed through others? Impossible to know.)

Because I hate River of Dreams, I am not sure how much more I will be able to say in this thread. In case I don't get a chance to say so, I will take this opportunity to express deep thanks to the good Doctor and all the other participants. It's certainly been a ride.

Don't mind this one so much, but it's Stockholm Syndrome now. I'm happy that it at least sounds organic, compared to the synthed-up background vox and click tracks we've been hearing.

And not a bad twofer list, DC. Turnstile Serenade not a bad album name either.

doc! where the hell is "zanzabar" in those condensed records!!!!

otherwise i'm especially down with turnstile serenade if phil ramone were onboard by then

I love Zanzibar, but that album sort of resists compression - felt I could have either it or Stiletto but not both...

hm i feel u

anyway i also agree that the stranger deserves to be included on the "majority good" albums, he just whiffs the ending so bad that it makes me think of the record poorly

what's funny is that if you end the record with "she's always a woman," it becomes all killer and is a tidy but still album-length 32 minutes

(glass houses is only 35 minutes and not coincidentally it mostly rules)

"House of Blue Light": yawn

Holy shit, this is endless...

okay we have a new winner/loser...house of blue light is the worst song we've heard thus far

in an alternate universe, billy joel replaces jeff healey in roadhouse

And now, as the world disintegrates yet further, our weekend listening - a small odds-and-sods roundup! All of a sudden in the 1990s, Billy became a pretty active contributor of cover versions to soundtracks and compilations. I'm not sure of the reason for this, but I'm going to guess it's financial - maybe being out from under the Artie Ripp deal meant that it suddenly was more attractive to do recordings that offered no prospect of songwriter royalties? Or maybe it has something to do with his management shakeup and legal troubles, about which more next time.

Anyway, I wasn't sure exactly how to cover these since they are only tenuously part of the 'canon' and even most fans probably don't know them. They're actually a pleasant surprise at this juncture - to me, Billy sounds relaxed and like he's having fun, which is a change of pace after some of the arthritic grunting and thrashing on Storm Front. But I don't know if a listening thread has hit an artist that has this particular kind of 'long tail' of covers and minor works. Rather than leave them out entirely, or dribble them out over days of thread-killing listening, I'm just going to consolidate them into a couple of compilation posts: this one, and then one or two coming after River of Dreams and the other miscellaneous material (e.g. the new Joel originals on the third Greatest Hits). If you prefer to bow out of the thread at the end of RoD, I don't blame you, but I - and perhaps I alone - will see this spreadsheet of songs through to the end.

So, here's what we've got...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbr_cg-6OQk

When You Wish Upon A Star, with Billy in Ray mode again, was provided for the 1991 Disney Channel / direct-to-video offering Simply Mad About The Mouse. I don't need to run down the rest of the all-star track list because two years ago, soref made of it a poll: Simply Mad About the Mouse: A Musical Celebration of Imagination Do give a moment or two to the video, which features a jitterily-animated Billy pulling his version of a "Take On Me."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej9hYC1-_RI

In A Sentimental Mood, the Duke Ellington/Manny Kurtz classic, comes to us by way of the soundtrack to the 1992 baseball comedy classic A League of Their Own. Similarly to what we just heard, this was a case of a high-concept soundtrack, this time with adult-contemporary hitmakers (James Taylor! Carol King! The Manhattan Transfer!) covering big-name songs of the 30s and 40s. Taken together, these two Billy numbers suggest he might have done well to anticipate Rod Stewart's Songbook albums, and just start knocking out whole records of this kind of material.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGqiX8fB6A4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsktHpH5QGk

Finally, Heartbreak Hotel and All Shook Up hail from another "current stars, classic tunes" soundtrack, to another 1992 comedy: the forgotten Cage/Caan/Parker joint, Honeymoon in Vegas. As Wiki explains, The soundtrack was composed mainly of covers of Elvis Presley songs performed by many contemporary artists. Also included are the ramblings of Chief Orman when Mahi Mahi takes Jack to his Chief's shack instead of Korman's beach side mansion. Other big names include Willie Nelson, Mellencamp, Yoakam, Tritt, Amy Grant, and Bono. "All Shook Up" was in fact released as a single; it peaked at #92 on Billboard and #15 on Adult Contemporary.

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Are you going to do "To Make You Feel my Love"?

But of course!

You didn't mention Bryan Ferry! His cover of "Are You Lonesome Tonight" is tops.

Joel does fine by "All Shook Up."

felt it was generous even to allow him as "another big name" tbh but i will admit that ferry is a major blind spot for me as far as pop-rock for squares and their parents is concerned

maybe because he's not for squares or parents? idk

what should i check out by him? there is a strong and embarrassing possibility I have been conflating him with bryan adams for most of my life...

now I'm imagining early Roxy Music doing Summer of 69

yet Bryan Ferry could sing "Heaven."

"When You Wish Upon a Star" and "In a Sentimental Mood" are preferable to any Rod Stewart standard, but only because anything is.

"All Shook Up" is perfunctory, but he sounds committed to it, and its not unpleasant. His "Heartbreak Hotel" is lugubrious, though.

Amused to learn that two of these songs were from Honeymoon In Vegas and another from A League of Their Own, as I saw both films at a double feature in the Summer of '92 (twas a preview screening for the former, back when studios did that).

You say Ray Charles for "Wish Upon a Star", but he's hitting some Neil Diamond buttons in the lead-up.

All this Rod Stewart talk makes me wonder which Tom Waits song WMJ should've covered.

We need a Ferry listening thread for Doc Casino

i have an album's worth of catching up to do.

that's not her style – that's not *his* style, musically speaking, is it? i could see elton john giving this a go in the mid-'70s, though, circa rock of the westies. and making it better. it's catchy in a way that billy can hardly help being. i hate it less than most of y'all seem to hate it.

we didn't start the fire – not a song i ever had any particular use for or ever need to hear again, but now that i'm making myself listen, it's hard not to notice what a perfectly constructed pop song it is. pretty much designed to be the annoying hit that it became. (also, pplains otmfm on this one.)

downeaster alexa – allentown at sea. with better details. i love this.

i go to extremes – there's a thin line between billy being introspective and billy being a string of clichés, and this one walks that line like a tightrope. i would love to hear it with innocent man arrangement and production. or totally phil spector'd out.

shameless – AOR. (also did billy actually write "i'm not a man who's ever been
insecure about the world i've been living in"? so much for introspection.)

storm front – why are the background vocals saying "mood indigo" on the choruses?

leningrad – this sounds more like goodnight saigon than i remembered. especially on the bridges. i like this a lot. he's good at this sort of thing, also, his voice sounds like it suddenly got 10 years younger.

state of grace – i'm going to blame mick jones for this one. it's a pretty straightforward divorce song with one of those melodies that billy circa innocent man could write in his sleep, and he may well have written this in one in his actual sleep, but it works. (whoever compared it to "she's right on time" upthread is otm.) but the production tries to blow it up into a stadium-rock moment that it totally doesn’t need, or want, to be. it sounds like it's seven minutes long.

when in rome – does billy have a drawer full of songs like this that's labeled "end of side 2" that he randomly pulls from every time he gets to the end of side 2 on an album?

and so it goes – gorgeous. i could hear warren zevon singing this.

and then:

house of blue lights – wow this is awful.

when you wish upon a star – i have no need to hear this again, but, sure, it's kinda nice in its own way.

in a sentimental mood – fits his voice nicely.

heartbreak hotel – oh god no.

all shook up – this is a good bar-band cover. good to know in case that piano man gig doesn't work out.

mid-70s bernie taupin lyrics would improve "that's not her style" IMMENSELY. whatever his other faults or later sins, taupin was not generic and that's the biggest problem here apart from the overblown production and length. i've been getting the hook in my head a lot over the past week so there is the basis for a good song here.

"alexa" has proven to be the real earworm though, and its bleak watery chill (borrowed from "edmund fitzgerald" obv but enhanced by the interesting, evocative references to the giants in the canyons and "trawling atlantis") has definitely given me some feels. still think it could be better - "allentown" is, for example. but it's good.

agreed about his voice on "leningrad." that and "and so it goes" are reasonable and appealing ways for billy joel to sing at age 40. some of the other songs, not so much, but i also sometimes feel like he's struggling to be heard over the din of the arrangements. not dissimilar to me, last night at karaoke with no monitor and a garbage sound system generally, shredding my throat on "you may be right" and doing nobody in the audience any favors in the process.

having done the "twofer" album series i could imagine a fascinating if deeply unappealing playlist consisting ONLY of Side B songs that nobody cares about. probably tons of "horrible 70s album title" artists would suffer badly given similar treatment, of course.

mid-70s bernie taupin lyrics would improve "that's not her style" IMMENSELY

truth.

"In a Sentimental Mood" is the only one of those four covers I would keep. He uses a very natural, pleasant voice

https://img.discogs.com/AIEd6VdpS3pUMF5TzFKmQkC8PhY=/fit-in/600x597/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-395298-1383899713-3426.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/cWcHcqFBmGGzjIpwA7CB4E9Eydo=/fit-in/600x594/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-395298-1383899716-1759.jpeg.jpg

River of Dreams is Billy Joel's twelfth and (to date) final pop album. Recorded at several New York area locations in 1992 and 1993, it was released in August of 1993. The worldwide success of the title track, and rave reviews in places like Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, helped it top the album charts in the US, Australia and New Zealand (and get to #2 or #3 in the UK, Austria, Germany, and Zimbabwe). In the US, it was certified five times platinum, and was nominated for an Album of the Year Grammy along with Automatic For The People, Ten Summoner's Tales and Kamakiriad. (The statue went to the unstoppable soundtrack to The Bodyguard, which outsold all of those put together, and then some.)

Some backstory: in 1989, finding himself mysteriously cash-poor for one of the best-selling artists of all time, Billy hired John Eastman (Linda McCartney's brother) to conduct a financial investigation into the work of Frank Weber - Elizabeth's brother, Alexa's godfather, and Billy's manager or co-manager since 1979. Citing fraud and embezzlement through sketchy investments and racehorse insurance scams, Joel fired Weber and sued him for $90 million. By 1992, he was also suing his own lawyer, Allen Grubman, who had come in via Weber and, allegedly, was in on the sketchy transactions. Neither case went to trial and it's not really clear how much if anything Billy ever recouped out-of-court. (Today his net worth is estimated at around $180 million, which puts him in the top forty richest musicians in the world, so I guess he eventually made the numbers work.) The point is that all of this bummed Billy out, and is usually cited as part of this album's emotional backstory. From the "Talks About" Sirius clips, here's Billy:

I had been pretty badly burned by my ex-manager, and I'd kinda lost faith in my ability to judge people anymore. I.. was just kind of lost at that point, but I think there were some good songs that came out of that. I kinda reclaimed my faith in humanity again by the time I finished writing the album, and I think that's the arc, what that album is. It's a man who has become completely disillusioned and has lost faith and is not sure of anything, and finds solid ground again because of the things that are really important - his kid, his friends, his ability in himself and uh.... defined the really substantive things in like that you hold on to you, that get you through.

The players vary from track to track. Liberty DeVitto appears only on "Shades of Grey," Richie Cannata returns on sax for "A Minor Variation," and Color Me Badd are heard on "All About Soul." Though Billy self-produces on "Shades of Grey" (I'm guessing maybe this one was recorded earlier) the rest of the production is credited to L.A. Sound session fiend and multi-instrumentalist Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar. You know his playing from the key albums of James Taylor, Carole King, Harry Nilsson, Warren Zevon and many others. ("Harry Nilsson, Warren Z, Red China, Jimmy T...") As producer, he surely hit his apex with Don Henley's two early-eighties blockbusters, I Can't Stand Still and Building the Perfect Beast. By the time of this album, his most recent noteworthy credits were some Spinal Tap albums, a late-period Joe Cocker effort, and Jon Bon Jovi's Blaze of Glory. He'd also lent a hand to The Bodyguard, producing Curtis Stigers's cover of "Peace, Love, and Understanding."

The cover art, by the way, comes from a large-format painting by Christie Brinkley; the sleeves for the singles are other excerpts from the same canvas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duQIG2nKEH8

No Man's Land, a lamentation of suburban sprawl, opens the album. In Europe, it got released as a single; it peaked at #50 in the UK. There were two videos, but for whatever reason the proper one cannot be found on YouTube so you only get the later live version. It does brings out the bass, and Liberty's drum-face.

https://img.discogs.com/74kM2JuAMiiytUAtWffCVHvfSRE=/fit-in/587x599/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2287675-1328305953.jpeg.jpg

Helluva better kickoff than we've got from the last two. Swear it sounds like another song, though I couldn't tell you which one. Almost -almost - a "Turn on the News" vibe going on here. Even that repeated line at 3:53 sounds familiar from somewhere else. If the Smithereens had released this one in 1989, it would've topped the alternative charts for six weeks.

But really, I'm so glad this guy is back:

They roll the sidewalks up, at night this place goes underground
Thanks to the condo kings, there’s cable now in Zombietown

Even if it does sound like he's got a bit of a cold on the verses.

I heard "No Man's Land" on AOR radio in fall '93. The arena rock cliches are better handled on this album, (thanks, Kootch!).

Swear it sounds like another song, though I couldn't tell you which one.

The intro is "Life During Wartime" and the chorus is "In God's Country."

"In God's Country" definitely OTM. I can hear a little LDW in there too.

My dad was gifted this album when it came out, so I have some vague memories of it. Remember it being a bit weirder than the singles that I knew Billy Joel for. This is a nice kickoff, with the crunchy production giving it some bite. His delivery is a bit hard to compare to other songs he's done, but I was into it by the chorus

Smithereens comparison otm

Ahh, I've been waiting for this ever since we finished up with An Innocent Man. The only Billy album I bought new upon release (or within a month or two of its release, at least). I still remember taking shit from one of my grade 10 classmates for listening to this ("my MOM listens to him!") and being amused by my biology teacher who looked, to me, a bit like Billy Joel and once bragged to the class about having tickets to this tour.

Anyway, it may be the nostalgia talking, but as far as aging-boomer-rails-against-yuppies-and-corpratism songs go, this one ain't bad. It may be just a skip and a jump away from the Eagles' appalling "Get Over It," but Billy is raging against systems, not people. Also, the production is beefier and less hollow sounding than the frankly ugly sound that marred most of Storm Front.

My memories of this album - I was already a 19-year-old college freshman with Pavement, Sebadoh and Screaming Trees in my trusty Case Logic carrying case. Over the summer, I worked a temp job in this guy's garage, collating advertising flyers. We listened to Top 40 (except for the Rush Limbaugh show) all day, and the semi-title track repeated at least once an hour. It, and Elton John's Lion King song are forever burned into my psyche of those little pink finger dishes we used to keep our fingers from blistering on the newsprint.

I've come around to enjoy both though!

Also, I'm pretty sure that the timing works out so that "Lolitas and suburban lust" lands as an explicit reference to Amy Fisher, no?

Ah, the early 90s...

This was present in our house - I can picture it on the top of the bookshelf where my sister kept her CDs - but I have no idea when it arrived (one of our first CDs? or a late 90s yard sale pickup?) and I cannot remember *ever* hearing it played. Certainly not by me, which is amazing considering my love of GH1&2. Something about the cover just said "grownups, boring, stay away." Now I'd actually say it's one of his best album covers (though the back is just a BIT "Off The Ground"), certainly refreshing after the last couple of dud sleeves.

Agreed that this is a strong opening, especially that the production is far less grating... a much more defensible form of rock. I'd still appreciate a little less stuff in the mix but it feels much more like a band playing live, and I think Billy is an artist that just clicks into place better as the leader of a band than as the vocalist-songwriter that backing tracks have been arranged around. Sonically I think he's going for maybe Mellencamp or somebody more than U2. (The prechorus reminds me of Aerosmith's "Rag Doll," but more for the tune than the sound.) Obviously by 1993 this was not exactly fashionable rock but it had an audience still up for arena shows with fifteen people on stage.

The length is still a problem but the lyrics have regained some specificity - as in his other "protest" songs it seems that when he personally cares about a cause, he puts more work into getting the words right. What does push it towards clueless "Get Over It" conserva-rock terrritory, for me, is that the "they've ruined the old home-place" screed elides the role of Billy Joel himself as a rich guy who bought a glass house in No Man's Land as early as the late 70s - gee, wonder WHY there ain't no island left for islanders like me. A more interesting song would be shaded by at least some self-awareness; once you're part of the problem it's a lot harder to do a "Don't It Make You Want To Go Home?" type lyric.