Billy Joel hits from the '80s

A couple of these are among the worst songs ever written. A couple are great. I'm going with "Pressure," which is one of the latter.

I've always thought of "Matter of Trust" a sort of lost Bryan Adams song.

OTM. so many good ones and so many not-good ones.

i count "all for leyna" among the good, but in what world was it ever a hit?

it was only a single in the UK, and obv i was cut-and-pasting from wikipedia

songs i like or love on this list:

"All for Leyna"
"You May Be Right"
"Don't Ask Me Why"
"Sometimes a Fantasy"
"Pressure"
"Allentown"
"Tell Her About It"
"Uptown Girl"
"An Innocent Man"
"The Longest Time"
"Keeping the Faith"
"A Matter of Trust"

A Matter Of Trust

New funk, cool punk, even if it's old junk, it's still rock'n'roll to me.

Modern Woman is a lot of fun to do at karaoke

Wasn't that a montage song in "Ruthless People?"

kinda amazing that I can still sing the refrains to a bunch of these songs even though I hate them and haven't heard them in 25+ years

Wow, I used to be completely obsessed with All For Leyna when I was a pre-teen. But The Nylon Curtain is one of those absolute moment-in-time albums I lived inside during early pre-adolescence that still holds a total soft spot for me, even though I haven't listened to it in years. Listening to Goodnight Saigon on YouTube and it's a bit... obvious in a lot of ways. But it still gets me.

Wow, I'd forgotten Scandinavian Skies. Why can't that be on the list? It's weird how many of these songs still resonate - but as much as I loved Glass Houses and Nylon Curtain, I pretty much stopped dead after that.

"Allentown" for sure, then "Pressure."

These might be my top five, all in a row!

"Don't Ask Me Why"
"Sometimes a Fantasy"
"Pressure"
"Allentown"
"Goodnight Saigon"

Guess I need to get a copy of The Nylon Curtain someday.

Favorite '80s LP now is probably Songs In The Attic (which probably doesn't count, just wanted to mention it anyway.) Approve of Innocent Man in theory; just never want to hear anything off it. And "You May Be Right" and "It's Still Rock and Roll" are probably objectively better than the other Glass Houses ones I listed above; just never need to hear them again, either. "Close To The Borderline" and "Sleeping With The Television On" should have been hits.

When I clicked on this thread, I thought it would be really easy to just pick "Pressure" and move along, but now I can't make up my mind.

Ha ha, it's so weird listening to these songs when I haven't heard them in nearly 30s years. I think I taped Allentown off the radio about 20 times in a row when it first came out. And it's a shitty, shitty, terrible song. But listening to it, I can hear *exactly* why I loved it - all those weird mechanised SHHHH CLANG DING SHHH OOM BAH machine noises.

Even as an 11 year old, I was attracted to the sound of machines - did I really have any choice in what my musical tastes would become.

Also, wow, how gay was this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzJxmH7Sj0Y

Shower scene and naked synchronised steel working - did they really used to allow that sort of thing on MTV?

xp (And actually, I should probably go back and listen to "Goonight Saigon" again, before I say I like it that much. It's been a while with that one. It's always been conflated with Charlie Daniels' "Still In Saigon" from the year before -- which I definitely like - in my head.)

xhuxk massively OTM re "Close to the Borderline" and "Sleeping With The Television On," but not "It's Still Rock and Roll," whose priggish sourness ruins it. For me, "objectively good but have heard it too many times ever to really enjoy it again" is "The Longest Time."

My three favorites at the time: "Don't Ask Me Why," "Pressure," and "Tell Her About It." But Glass Houses is by far the best of his 80s ALBUMS (indeed, the only one I'd listen to now) and halo effect brings "Don't Ask Me Why" to the top.

lol yeah SO GAY

why the hell is he playing a guitar in that video?

xp

Re: "The Longest Time" and "Uptown Girl," I really liked the idea of doo-wop and Four Seasons tributes in the mid '80s. Just never actually thought they sounded doo-wop or Four Seasons enough, I guess. (But really, they probably are among the better songs up there anyway.)

Don't like Close To The Borderline or Sleeping With The Television - I tended not to like the rockier Joel songs. But bear in mind it's hard to listen to this music with anything other than a 10 year old's ears.

Listening to this stuff, I do wonder how much of my pre-teen tastes in 80/81 revolved around having piano lessons and being attracted to music I understood in terms of the piano and playing it. Because in 1982 I discovered Duran Duran and that was the end of loving piano-based music.

He is playing a guitar because he is An Hobo and hobos can hardly drag around pianos when they are sleeping on park benches.

When I was 13 I thought that the lyrics to 'You May Be Right' were really clever.

first three '80s albums, in order: new-wave reaction, beatles homage, '50s pastiche. all of them totally worthwhile, at least one of them (glass houses) great. if he had kept going in the same backwards chronological direction, which would have made his next album a sinatra tribute and the one after an ernest tubb covers album, his run of greatness might well have continued.

"The Longest Time" is one of the only songs in his entire catalogue that doesn't make me want to blow up buildings, so that I suppose.

do wonder how much of my pre-teen tastes in 80/81 revolved around having piano lessons and being attracted to music I understood in terms of the piano

that was exactly the reason i first fell in love with him. and warren zevon.

and the one after an ernest tubb covers album,

lololol at imagining this trainwreck

beatles homage

I've always heard this, but what Beatles music is "Allentown" and "Pressure" and "Goodnight Saigon" supposed to be homaging, exactly? (Not being sarcastic -- I really hear the connection. Or does the Beatles thing only apply to the rest of the album?)

(really don't hear the connection, I meant.)

Allentwon melody is very McCarteyesque

I think this is the song that really garnered the Beatles-y comparisons...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjNzpy667zY

(and still my favourite)

(xp) it's the rest of the album, and really only some of the rest of the album. it's most obvious on "surprises" and "scandinavian skies," which sound to me like he was going for late-period beatles/john lennon in songwriting, production and vocal delivery. the production of a few others plays with late '60s psychedelic era memes, too. but, yeah, the singles don't quite connect to the same theme. though i might be able to make a case for "goodnight saigon," a song i've never much liked.

...waiting for challopsy "We Didn't Start the Fire" commnet...waiting....waiting...

(xp to myself) and his super-clear enunciation of his F-bomb on "laura" sounds to me like he's channeling lennon again, though if you asked me why exactly i think this, i'm not sure i could answer you.

started this thread because really the guy was a master of bubblegum and bullshit -- a lot of songs here that I can't help but jam whenever they come on the radio, particularly Tell Her About It and Keeping The Faith and Still Rock and Roll and I Go To Extremes. The Longest Time is one of my favorite pop chart pastiches of old timey music ever.

On Laura - "Living alone isn't all that's it's cracked up to be" = "Living is easy with eyes closed" in tone and delivery and almost melody as well.

The "aaaa-aaaahs" and George Harrison guitar riffs and Indian-esque strings on Laura are almost slipping into pastiche. I mean, even Sloan would have been embarrassed to pull Beatle-isms this obvious.

Does anyone remember when wacky newspaper writer Dave Barry had a sitcom based on his life? "You May Be Right" was its theme song.

Pretty amusing to me that such resolutely sub-MOR dudes as Billy Joel and Johnny Cougar both nonetheless managed '80s winning streaks before sinking back to the mediocrity from whence they came.

yes. Dave's World. starring Night Court dude and co-starring radio vet Shadoe Stevens! that is like my primary point of reference for that song. (xpost)

weren't most of the winning streaks in the '80s pretty resolutely MOR?

Depends on how you look at it. I'm sure there are lots here who'd consider Prince, Madonna, Springsteen, Tom Waits and the Clash (say) as MOR as Billy Joel and Mellencamp. Anyway, I called the latter two "sub-MOR," which puts them in a different category. When they both broke in the '70s, did anyone expect jack from them?

captain jack, maybe ::BA DUM CRASH::

xp Cougar started out making Stones/Springsteen-styled rock albums (pretty good ones, but whatever), with touches of glam and new wave. He put out a single on an Indiana punk rock label, and was known to cover the Stooges live. How is that "sub MOR"?

my point was more that a lot of people started out AOR in the '70s and ended up considerably more MOR in the '80s as they caved to MTV/synths/gated drums to stay on the charts (Tom Petty, Dire Straits, Fleetwood Mac, Springsteen, Don Henley, Genesis, the list goes on and on and on).

Yeah, I can see that, I guess.

The Coug used to cover the Stooges? Who knew? But when I say sub-MOR, I mean "I Need a Lover." I'd call it sub-MOR, because it's MOR minus personality, which he would get later. And Joel. And, hey, Phil Collins, too.

"I Need a Lover" is a killer track. (The way the rhythm extends itself, and keeps going.) And he already had his personality then, believe me. It didn't just suddenly show up when he started caring about farmers and their scarecrows. In fact, I'd say he had more personality when he was just a snotball greaser smartass, early on.

Also pretty sure I'd take Billy Joel's best '70s hits over his best '80s ones, fwiw. (And his worst '80s hits -- post-Innocent Man-- were as bad, or more likely worse, than his worst '70s ones.)

I have a sentimental attachment to It's Still Rock and Roll. Course, he wasn't big news in the UK in the way he was in the States until Uptown Girl, so while I'd probably heard My Life, the first time I became aware of a person called Billy Joel was our first ever family holiday to the States, in summer 1980, when I was 11. We were driving around California/Nevada/Utah and this song was all over the radio - and for the first time ever in a car we had pop radio on because there was no Radio 4, of course, and my parents were at a loss as to whether was any acceptable alternative. (In fact, having had a R4 childhood that turned into a R4 adulthood, those three weeks are probably the only time in my life that I ever listened to any volume of daytime music radio.) It's Still Rock and Roll is the only song I can remember from those three weeks: the whole family sang along after the first couple of listens, and it was the single thing that would calm whatever squabbling was going on across those endless, endless miles. It was a minor hit in the UK when we got back and I bought it and played it to death, "Objectively" I can see the mean-spiritedness of it, but it summons indelible memories, it's so much fun, and listening to it again earlier was wonderful.

As long as no one votes We Didn't Start the Fire - the most offensive record ever made from the point of view of leftwing non-Americans - I don't mind.

Wasn't that a montage song in "Ruthless People?"

Don't think I've heard it in any other context!

"I Need a Lover" is a killer track. (The way the rhythm extends itself, and keeps going)

You must really like "Jungleland," then. Or the Beaver Brown Band!

When they both broke in the '70s, did anyone expect jack from them?

Well, as the '80s started, BJ's last two albums had gone to #2 and #1, so yeah, I'd think people would have been expecting jack from him!

What I had no idea about, until I just looked at Joel's Wikipedia page, is that he hasn't released an album of original material since 1993! Really? I just assumed he released an adult-contemporary record every three years and I just never encountered them, but apparently not.

just assumed he released an adult-contemporary record every three years and I just never encountered them

that BJ is Bon Jovi

"should pre-emptively state that I am the person who voted for "The Downeaster 'Alexa'" even though I can't explain or justify it"

there aint no island for islanders like you, make that 2 votes

Well, "We Didn't Start The Fire" (which, whatever you hate about it, at least isn't merely generic) over "A Matter Of Trust" for sure. (In fact, I'd say "Fire" is my favorite post-Innocent Man hit, if only because I hear nothing notable at all in anything else I've heard by him since then. Feel free to point out where I'm wrong.)

Though I don't know -- at least "Downeaster Alexa" is about, like, a boat, right? I guess that's okay. But "A Matter Of Trust", or "I Go To Extremes"?? Shoot me now.

Yeah, if you've ever actually seen the abandoned steel mill in Bethlehem, or spent much time the Lehigh Valley, there's really no other choice on the list.

― xhuxk, Friday, July 16, 2010 4:49 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, my wife was going to college in the Lehigh Valley when we started dating, and the closing of Bethlehem Steel had a huge impact on the Baltimore area too. so I definitely like "Allentown" more on that level. really just isn't my favorite tune on the list, though.

xp Hell, at least "We Didn't Start The Fire" is funny, in its stupid way. Hell, it mentions thalidomide! Not to mention "JFK!! Blown away!! What more do I have to say!!" What does "A Matter Of Trust" have that compares to that? It's a blank of a record.

xp less about a boat more male working class struggle to survive in changing modern world, which may well also be generic but for a 12 year old boy,bereft of later omniscience, such a find didn't get much better, so dramatic and epic!

a matter of trust is joel's least-cloying rock song. it also emphasizes guitars in a way joel's other rock songs didn't (and sort of effectively, iirc); for that reason -- to me, at least -- it stood out in his catalog. we didn't start the fire is hokey and clumsy and stupid.

plus video = basement tapes + rooftop 'get back'!

somehow i've never actually heard the billy joel 'shameless' but would've voted garth version easy over any of the above. voted 'allentown'.

either "Allentown" or "Don't Ask Me Why" for me. I like some of the others, but they're all pretty distant third place etc

serendipitously, the Billy Joel episode of VH1 Classic's All Time Top Ten is coming on at 1 today.

I like "The Longest Time" & the other An Innocent Man singles too. I pretty much hate everything after that ("we had no Softsoap"!), and most of what's before it ("Allentown" is an exception).

also serendipitously, I flipped over from VH1 Classic to a movie channel to watch the scene from Step Brothers screencapped at the top of the thread

Sorry, I felt grumpy last night.

tbh i wouldn't start a thread about Billy Joel without the expectation of some posts like yours.

All these years later with a couple more generations screwing things up, "We Didn't Start the Fire" sound pretty cogent.

after much internal debate, i went with my heart and voted for billy at his most bubblegummy -- "all for leyna," which has been a favorite for years.

close runners up were "don't ask me why," which is billy's finest macca moment, and "sometimes a fantasy." all from glass houses, which i neglected to mention above is almost as much a bubblegum homage as it is a new wave reaction (which is kinda sorta the same thing, come to think of it). and speaking of which, "you may be right" sounded pretty great blasting over the williamsburg waterfront between sets at the murder city devils show today.

Voted for "All for Leyna"; I haven't heard it in decades, and I think it's the song on the list that I most feel like listening to right now. It benefits from priority bias (I saw it first on the list, it started playing in my head, and none of the other titles drowned it out).

...hey caved to MTV/synths/gated drums to stay on the charts (Tom Petty, Dire Straits, Fleetwood Mac, Springsteen, Don Henley, Genesis, the list goes on and on and on).

Dude, you have the relationship backwards regarding Genesis. Phil Collins was part of the group that invented gated drums.

Sorry, "they".

ah yeah, i got into oversimplifying in a way that kinda twisted up the truth, my bad

I hate "Allentown" so much, almost as much as "Piano Man"

More than this?

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

well okay no, I don't hate it more than that

I have no memory of these songs:

"The Night Is Still Young"
"Modern Woman"

"Modern Woman" was apparently a top 10 hit! listening to it right now, don't recognize it at all.

¥eah, I know it was on a movie soundtrack before it appeared on The Bridge, but I don't remember hearing it. Apparently Joel hates it.

can't blame him (and again i LIKE a lot of these songs)

oh lol, the song from "Ruthless People"

yes, it's terrible

Pressure.

If this had 70s songs it would be Movin Out without hesitation.

Another classic from the Ruthless People soundtrack:

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

Thread derail, but this is sad-pathetic:

The film's theme song was co-written by Mick Jagger, Daryl Hall and Eurythmics co-member Dave Stewart and performed by Jagger. Assuming the song would be a hit, "Weird Al" Yankovic requested (and received) permission from Jagger to record a parody version, "Toothless People", for his upcoming Polka Party! album. When Jagger's song failed to crack the Top 40, Yankovic considered not recording his version; because Jagger had "authorized" the parody, however, he decided failing to produce it would be an insult to the artist and recorded it.

continuing thread derail: though his choices are sometimes questionable, weird al's sense of personal ethics is really admirable, and i like to think the fact he is not a ruthless people himself -- by all indications, he is quite the opposite -- is partly the reason for his unusually long career.

also, as solo mick jagger goes, he's done a LOT worse.

Yeah, by "sad-pathetic" I meant Mick Jagger. He records this song he thought he was such a surefire hit that he allowed Weird Al to have a go.

i don't think that's necessarily hubris on jagger's part, maybe he was just being nice and saying sure, go for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQVC2Ja3GUI

Holds its own among early-80s recession anthems.

if this had 70s songs it would be Movin Out without hesitation.

I'm thinking this is otm. I'm also a big fan of "my life"

"Vienna" for the 70s.

I found Goodnight Saigon quite moving when I was a kid. Billy Joel is woven through my childhood actually, seems like every family car journey it was either him or Paul Simon.

i wore out my cassette of greatest hits vol I & II

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Not bad!

thinking about that "allentown" video and its alleged gayness ... i recall Donut Bitch's thread suggestion that one imagine Billy Joel as a tranny when singing his songs.

Would've voted Downeaster Alexa... One of those phenomenally well-written songs he occasionally comes up with.

Would go for Movin Out in a 70s poll.

Haha, I see I did vote, and I voted for Pressure. More fool me.

there was kind of '70s Joel poll, which "Movin' Out" did win: Billy Joel: The Complete Hits Collection, disc 1

Pretty amusing to me that such resolutely sub-MOR dudes as Billy Joel and Johnny Cougar both nonetheless managed '80s winning streaks before sinking back to the mediocrity from whence they came.

so so so wrong about Johnny Cougar.

I do like the way he pronounces "loooonatic" in "You May Be Right"