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

running time wise, it could be called "I Go To Great Lengths"

haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gav66byYJMw

Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel) takes it back to Billy and his piano, with some strings adding color. Joel recalls it being inspired by Alexa Ray, age six or seven, asking about what happens after people die. He connects this inquiry to his declining relationship with Christie Brinkley; they divorced in August 1994, which I probably should have mentioned as part of the background to the album overall. Though the song reminds me again of Nilsson, it reportedly began life as a monophonic plainchant introduction to "The River of Dreams" (in Latin and everything!), then for a while was an interlude within that track, and then late in the album's gestation it was plucked free and turned into a song in its own right.

As a single (here's the video) it peaked at #77 on the Hot 100 (#18 on Adult Contemporary); it is the last single released from a non-compilation Billy Joel album. It ultimately became a children's book (like "New York State of Mind") in 2004, and has been covered many times, most notably by Celine Dion.

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This is the other one I was dreading. A lot of this was timing: for some reason, a drippy lullaby to a child didn't strike me as all that cool when I was 15. These days, I admit, I'm more apathetic towards it: it is what it is, and more to the point, I'm not curmudgeon enough to begrudge new(ish) parents one token song of this nature (hell, even Jay Z has one).

beats liam gallagher's!

also i'm just a sucker for billy singing over the piano in an unforced voice. one of pop's great ineffable combinations imho.

Yeah I think one is somewhat affecting. Definitely not as good as something like "She's Got a Way", but still pretty. Could do without the last verse, the "lullabyes go on and on" one. Don't make it so easy for us to criticize you, Billy

lovely and, yes, very nilsson-y. a classic billy joel album closer, not used as an album closer for reasons that i believe will become obvious in three days.

i hate the way he stretches out and enunciates the word "ocean." if i may quibble.

so River of Dreams exceeded expectations, no? I think it's one of his five best.

https://i.imgur.com/aK5xTKZ.jpg

"No, it's very sweet, Daddy. Um. Wanna do 'Movin Out' again?"

it's definitely much, much better than i'd always been led to believe by AllMusic. i dunno how often i'd pull it out and listen to it but i was prepared for a completely tuneless slog by a man convinced he was supposed to write some songs but with no interest in writing any. it's more like a man interested in writing songs, whose powers who aren't quite what they used to be but who still has an ear for a hook and who, thank god, is back to a decent producer making him sound good.

can't go top five, at least based on what we've heard so far. for me it's, in some order, the run from turnstiles through innocent man, minus nylon curtain. i like my billy albums stacked with hook-packed singles and quality pastiche, i guess.

It's exceeded my (very low) expectations.

river of dreams has been my favorite thing about this listening party. i wrote it off almost immediately, in its time, as an album of those aforementioned boomer soul cliches. the two previous albums had severely tested my billy devotion and i never even thought to give this one a fair shot. where did this burst of creativity come from? it may well be top five for me.

it's better than a couple of those '70s albums.

it's better than streetlife serenade for sure... i'd need to go back and listen to the first two to be sure. as rough and reedy as cold spring harbor was, there's something about the enthusiastic energy of a young and less-trained songwriter that appeals to me. some of these later songs, i feel like billy's main inspiration was finding a chord change he hadn't used before that he thought was neat.

on a related note, i recently picked up the self-titled Hassles album, put it on for the first time last night and it sounded great. totally and utterly generic for the period (garage band doing soul covers, struggling to be psychedelic in the vein of Moby Grape or something), but i like the period and i like teenage billy's rockin' instincts on the electric organ. i think once we've wrapped up the chronology i'll double back for some selection of tracks from that period, even if it's just me on the thread....

I probably like it better than any 70s album except The Stranger.

I will grudgingly confess that RoD is better than I remembered, but is still not going to become a fixture on my turntable.

i think once we've wrapped up the chronology i'll double back for some selection of tracks from that period, even if it's just me on the thread

i believe you will not be alone on the thread. and while i don't know if this makes it better or not, in my memory the second hassles album, hour of the wolf, was more, um, interesting.

After The Stranger, Glass Houses, and Innocent Man, RoD is probably my next favorite, but those three are in their own tier

man i love this song, wow

the minor key derivation in the middle is such a rich choice

song sorta indirectly reminds me of "vienna"

i think i meant to say "digression" not "derivation" lmao

this is the first time i've felt motivated to skip ahead. album is quality all the way to the end imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo_vn_Ilsu8

The River of Dreams, lead single off the album of nearly the same title, was Billy Joel's last big hit. On the Hot 100 for 27 weeks, it peaked at #3 in October of 1993 (with Mariah Carey's "Dreamlover" at #1 and SWV's double-A-side of "Right Here (Human Nature)" and "Downtown" at #2). It also made it to #3 in the UK, behind songs called "Mr. Vain" and "It Keeps Rainin' (Tears From My Eyes)" which are both ciphers to me. Meanwhile it hit #1 in Australia and New Zealand, and top ten in a half-dozen other markets. Finally, it hit #1 on Adult Contemporary, and since I haven't done this in a while let me just run down the top five to give a sense of what that chart looked like at this date: at #2, Tina Turner's "I Don't Want To Fight" (dethroned by Billy) then Sting's "Fields of Gold," "Dreamlover" again, and Michael Jackson's "Will You Be There."

Billy's described the songwriting in instinctive, unforced terms - came in a dream, Biblical phrases started popping up in the shower, "I still don't really know what that song is about," et cetera. As mentioned yesterday, it has something of a version history; I haven't been able to find the Latin-language "Gregorian chant" intro, but thanks to the "My Lives" box we do have one take still featuring the Lullabye section as an instrumental break and a far less compelling rhythm track. This assemblage of outtakes also contains a few other takes, though they don't add too much to the picture. Finally, some versions of the single also featured a "Percapella remix."

The music video, Wikipedia asserts, was directed by one Andy Monahan, who'd previously used "the same lighting, locations and camera angles" in his video for Elton's "You've Gotta Love Someone," though to be honest I couldn't sit through the entirety of that one to check on this claim. Arguably more of a must-watch is Billy's Grammy performance, featuring a well-received comment on the decision, earlier in the night, to cut off a speech by Frank Sinatra on the occasion of his being given a "Legend Award." Stick it to the man, Billy!

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this is the second time in the billy joel catalog that i've been really deeply struck by the quality of production on a song i thought i knew every contour of (bc this is one of the earwormiest earworms ever written), last time was "just the way you are"

On the Hot 100 for 27 weeks, it peaked at #3 in October of 1993 (with Mariah Carey's "Dreamlover" at #1 and SWV's double-A-side of "Right Here (Human Nature)" and "Downtown" at #2)

damn october '93 hot 100 full of bangers

"valuable advertising time going by" yeah you show 'em billy!!!

imho this song is a masterstroke, and a return of so much of what i loved about "classic billy," set in a musical landscape we've never heard from him before. the lyrics could maybe be tightened up or made more specific in places, but the density of hooks is like nothing we've heard since an innocent man. and the lush sweetness of the production perfectly evokes the sense that 43-year-old dads have dreams and fears, and deserve redemption, as much as do teenagers packing lucky strikes and a mint called sen-sen. also the deployment of gospel sounds feels earned and respectful (to me as an outsider) rather than appropriative.

the fun of dealing with this album has been discovering that rather than one lone gem surfacing in a blah album, this song is just the very best track in a pretty-good album. up until this past week i would have said he basically should have packed it in after storm front and had this be the "september"-style big hit off Greatest Hits III. but it turns out this is more of a defensible album than either of the two that preceded it, depending on your affection for VH1 music.

zachary alford ("known for his work in the Saturday Night Live Band" according to wikipedia) is the credited drummer here but i like that it just kinda sounds like a drum loop

also bless any song in which the pauses get progressively longer

Alford was in Bowie's Earthling-era band too.

I was mighty sick of "River of Dreams" in fall '93, and it didn't go away. At the time it was dismissed as "Graceland" lite. OTM about what a masterful piece of songwriting it is.

Agree with what's already been said.

This used to come on the radio, and for a moment, I'd think it was "Streets of Philadelphia". 1993 a very somnolent year for the Boomer acts.

Alford was in Bowie's Earthling-era band too.

and at the time of this recording, he had just come off a tour with bruce springsteen and the not-e-street-band.

Great song, arrangement is more out there than in recalled

Agreed that Billy is ending off on a good note w River of Dreams

This used to come on the radio, and for a moment, I'd think it was "Streets of Philadelphia".

i never paid any attention to the lyric, which, damn, is rather on-the-nose with its springsteen and u2 gospel-lite borrowings of rivers and promised lands and mysterious things i am looking for and haven't found. it's a damn good lyric nonetheless. it's graceful and sounds lived-in. i love "we all end in the ocean/we all start in the streams." and i love that toward the end he throws in a moment of personal agnostic clarity about how he isn't a spiritual man and "i'm not sure about a life after this." he may, it turns out, just be a middle-aged dude out sleepwalking. and thinking about some serious shit.

the production is undeniable. after an album or two of songs that overstayed their welcome by a minute or two, my favorite part of this one may be the final minute of vamping.

the vamping, in another touch of innocent-man musical salvation, includes a little bit of the Cadillacs' forgotten "Gloria."

my favorite thing is the different ways "in the middle of the night" works as hook - at the start of the refrain, where it comes back from silence, and at the end, where it completes the thought, set to a different melody.

love the madman piano-hammering that slips into this deceptively mellow AC track. that, the drum track, and the very selective use of his rockin' soul voice ("we're all CARRIED ALOOOONG!"), let us know he has not, indeed, just stayed out in the shade with those beers. there is life and passion in these late night wanderings. the grammy performance really brings this out - never thought I'd say that about any performance of anything at the grammys.

This song is the reason we had this album in my house. My dad, who was totally indifferent to 99% of music, got very enamored of this song when one of his friends had some sort of explanation of the lyrics and how it tied to Hindu concepts. (I didn't understand that now or then.)

Between his playing it and hearing it on the radio, I got pretty damn sick of this song in 1993. Nowadays, I can enjoy it more - it's got a killer hook, cool production. I always got a Bobby McFerrin vibe, maybe from the falsetto in the beginning. I've heard in concert BJ extends that last break up to several minutes

Lovely song. Back when my allowance afforded me only like one or maybe two albums a month (CDs were effing expensive in the early 90s!), it was rare for me to shell out for an album--particularly a new album--on the strength of one song when I had countless classic albums, greatest hits collections and available pieces of Prince's back catalogue to collect, but this tune swayed me. There are definitely bits on this album that don't work for me (though "A Minor Variation" is the only one I feel compelled to skip these days), the attention that I ended up lavishing on albums back in those days vs. these (where things are infinitely easier to find and consume, yes, but also to disregard) proved rewarding.

Although I didn't make the connection at the time, I appreciate how this song appealed (and still appeals) to me in a way that Paul Simon's similarly flavoured material did not. Simon, circa Graceland, sounded like a boring adult to me (whereas now he sounds like an insufferably smug boring adult), while "The River of Dreams" sounds joyous, graceful, searching and uplifting. Even the self-help spirituality of the lyric works, particularly in light of (as fcc pointed out) the caveat of "God knows I've never been a spiritual man;" the song is less about adopting a quick-fix philosophy than it is about the desire for an undefinable something greater that agnosticism renders bittersweet. As a Last Big Hit from a major artist, this has to be one of the very few to rank, quality-wise, quite high among that artists very best material.

Who's on background vocals? Session musicians or the same pack of Billies that did "The Longest Time"?

If you tell me that's Color Me Badd, I'm going to drown myself in a river of fear.

wiki says: Wrecia Ford, B. David Witworth, Crystal Taliefero, Marlon Saunders, and George and Frank Simms, most of whom are also part of the "All About Soul" ensemble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLCXt4d-wz0

Two Thousand Years is the penultimate track. I can't listen to it right now, and there doesn't seem to be much worthwhile trivia online, so I'm going to have to trust you all on its qualities!

i think it's extremely good, one of joel's loveliest melodies married to that really gorgeously-produced ebbing acoustic guitar arrangement. lyric is a little hokey but also how can you deny:

There will be miracles
After the last war is won
Science and poetry rule in the new world to come

Again, the plentitude of riches on what looked like a tombstone of an album has impressed the hell out of me

very pretty song

I remember some critic* taking shots at this song with something along the lines of "Billy Joel has a new song called '2000 Years' that is coincidentally the worst song of the last 2000 years," but whatever. It's not my favourite--sandwiched between my two favourite songs on the album, I always got a little impatient with it--but that little riff that sounds like either a synth or an accordion (the Wiki personnel list suggests it is the former, or at least that it is definitely not the latter), is nice.

*I thought it was EW, but when I went to look up their original review I remembered that they were quite fond of the record.

this is a cool track on first listen - the oomph coming in to support the pretty piano-and-voice stuff works, feels of a piece, not just dropped in by the producer. that, and the "it's been a long time and now i'm with you" part, are VERY classic billy. could have been on The Stranger.

i'm also in the right niche to find the synth riverdance riff charming - sounds like it should be in Sierra's Conquest of the Longbow - rather that obnoxious and cartoony. apparently he swaps it for traditional instruments live... bummer.

the riverdance bit sounds like "there's a hole in the bucket" with three orchestrated "ballad of billy the kid" chords as a cadence.

the song is a little corny and more than a little lovely. i swear i hear hints of george michael and michael jackson in this song, trying to heal the world with love and a big, sweeping melody. i think one of the reasons this album is so good is that a guy who's spent the last few years seemingly throwing random words on top of his melodies suddenly has things he wants to say. not sure if it's inspired by being in love or having a kid or being on the verge of divorce or being confused by the world or all of the above, but he just seems so *open* to things and ideas here, and so much less cynical.