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

https://frinkiac.com/img/S04E12/740539/medium.jpg

Popped into my local record shop and they've got two copies of this album in the new-arrivals bin, right next to each other! It's in the collective unconscious.

I think Billy favors the sound of words over the meaning - in the interviews that DC has posted, he said he usually comes up with the lyrics last. Obviously he's not going as far as Eno, but he's really good at choosing words that are memorable and fit his rhyme scheme, at the expense of a stupid line and mixed message here and there

basically fcc otm

However, he doesn't strike me as a lazy songwriter, even lyrically. I just think his priorities are more skewed towards sounding good than meaning good. Stupid lines are often among the most memorable in a song anyhow

otm

Stupid lines are often among the most memorable in a song anyhow

ha. and true. see also: billy's old tourmate elton john.

And Neil Diamond.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7lpvVf2rCY

Sleeping With The Television On is one of my very favorite Joel deep cuts and has been stuck in my head almost every day since we started this album. Though another step into Costello/Jackson territory, it also arrives at something very much like peak-period Hall & Oates, which is more than okay by me. Whether he knew the Dictators' Sleepin' With the TV On, I cannot guess.

the only album track Christgau liked!

except for the rinky-dink organ it works though

"Tomorrow morning, you'll wake up to the white noise." <--- one of my favorite WMJ lines. Just how he ends the verse with it.

Have we used up all the sound effect intros on this album yet? Glass breaking, touch-tone telephone, Star-Spangled Banner... Roger Waters must've been sitting next to his speakers, tapping his front teeth with a biro, going "Hmm. This guy's good."

And what are we going to use when we record our cover? The sound of the OnDemand menu blaring about La La Land available now! in the New Movies section?

Keyboard solo definitely EC. But it's all pretty tight. Liberty DeVitto should've been pretty happy with the way this one turned out.

For real my favorite or second-favorite track on this album. This veers straight into power-pop territory -- replace all the keyboards with guitars and I could imagine this being a track from Cheap Trick or the Real Kids. And he knows exactly what the song needs, too, with the major verses/choruses and relative minor bridges. It's right out of the Beatles handbook.

One of the best drum parts evah. I love the stab guitar and the sideways open-hat stuff (like under "just for the night ^ boys ^ ^"). One definitely hears Costello and Jackson.

otm on drumming and stab guitar

key hook for me is the way billy's lyric saves most of its syllables until it's going over the "all night long" backing vox, it's like sleater-kinney's intertwined guitar lines or something. obv this is also where liberty really shines with those high-speed fills.

What a jam - this might beat out "All for Leyna" for best new find. I love songs that are so efficient - intro, verses, choruses, TWO iterations of the bridge, solo, outro - there's a lot packed into 3:05! "Locked Out of Heaven" basically uses the same intro as this song, and it was a good steal on Bruno's part

I feel like this is just the right AMOUNT of the Star-Spangled Banner too -- starting on the "and" creates this tension that's not really resolved until Billy starts singing.

I loved this when this album came out and I don't think I knew what powerpop WAS then. Now I get it and agree he's going for that.

Damn I love the way he delivers "It just might be somebody else's same old line" on the second go-round. When he's literally repeating a line! In fact it's more like "It j-just" -- never noticed he STAMMERS that line the second time!

I really never realized how MUCH of Joel's shtick is writing songs that sound like love songs but are actually about how much of a hopeless schnook he is and how he hates himself, with the woman's role less as love object and more as living proof.

OK but not to keep hammering on this theme of cross-referencing Joel with Joe Jackson, but compare "Sleeping with The Television On" with "Is She Really Going Out WIth Him?" Again, the Jackson song is way way better, sorry, Billy, but is also more sour than mean. In Joel there's a sense that the woman MIGHT want to talk to you if only you had more guts and weren't sitting home alone and scared. For Jackson, there's really no point, no reason to encourage his narrator to "Tell Her About It" -- the woman is always gonna go off with the asshole anyway. When Jackson says "I can't seem to say or do the right thing" he means something is wrong with the OTHER person -- when Joel can't come up with words that aren't "somebody else's same old line," he's sincerely criticizing himself.

I kind of want to bring Fountains of Wayne "Leave the Biker" into this but I've got to go to a meeting.

There's a clip where he calls "I really wish I was less of a thinking man, and more a fool who's not afraid of rejection" the "key line" of the song. It's telling, I think, that it's a line concerning the speaker rather than Diane. This is one where I think he's *aware* of how the woman in the song, her supposed loneliness and sad TV-sleeping fate, are less a real person dancing at the club and more a projection in the mind of the man. Definite shades of Jackson in that approach, and more interesting than the superficially similar "I'll tell you how into it she really is" approach on "You May Be Right." I hear the comparison to "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" but idk, they're different stories, capturing slightly different moments/feelings/characters.

above should say "more sour and mean" not "more sour than mean"

this is okay, def a slightly smoother take on Cheap Trick or similar to my ears. Agree that the organ sound is rinky-dink and the weakest part, weird that they just didn't get a better sound out of the farfisa or vox or whatever they were using.

tbf, it was the style at the time!

(see e.g. "Pump It Up" which is surely the kind of thing Joel was thinking about whenever he talked about recognizing garage-rock in new wave. nothing on this album has either the heaviness or the swing of that song, both of which maybe give the organ sound a different feel in-context, but the actual tone on the instrument is i think pretty similar.)

i love this song

does this album totally fall apart at the end like the stranger? bc at the moment it's my favorite billy joel record

I can't imagine he has a better record in his catalog

this snarky new wave bubblegum style is his best by default to my ears - camouflages his weaknesses and highlights his strengths imo

i think it's also that billy, more than many or most of his peers, is a pure music-first guy. he strikes me as the kind of composer who, having finished a piece of music, doesn't ask himself "what do i want to say?" but rather "what do i have to do to finish this thing?" i think a lot of, ahem, honesty will come out that way, 'cause if you're just throwing words out into the air to make them fit a melody or to finish an exercise, chances are pretty good they're going to carry some of your inner being along with them. with billy, that means a lot of insecurity, anger, bitterness, paranoia and random memories and nostalgia. but it's passive messaging. he's not trying to express ideas so much as they just kind of tumble out as he searches for serviceable rhymes and turns of phrases.

― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, September 26, 2017 3:27 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

great post

ultimately, i imagine billy - at core - is a guy at a piano who happened upon a great little piano figure or chord change and keeps grinding on it to see if he can spin it into a song

that you can actually hear that in the finished product is emblematic of his failings as a songwriter

Have we used up all the sound effect intros on this album yet? Glass breaking, touch-tone telephone, Star-Spangled Banner... Roger Waters must've been sitting next to his speakers, tapping his front teeth with a biro, going "Hmm. This guy's good."

And what are we going to use when we record our cover? The sound of the OnDemand menu blaring about La La Land available now! in the New Movies section?

Favorite comment this week

(see e.g. "Pump It Up" which is surely the kind of thing Joel was thinking about whenever he talked about recognizing garage-rock in new wave. nothing on this album has either the heaviness or the swing of that song, both of which maybe give the organ sound a different feel in-context, but the actual tone on the instrument is i think pretty similar.)

SENTENCES I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD WRITE: Billy Joel is no Steve Nieve.

I'm really liking Glass Houses a lot so far

Billy Joel is no Steve Nieve

^^^post I almost made in this thread several times

'cause if you're just throwing words out into the air to make them fit a melody or to finish an exercise, chances are pretty good they're going to carry some of your inner being along with them. with billy, that means a lot of insecurity, anger, bitterness, paranoia and random memories and nostalgia. but it's passive messaging. he's not trying to express ideas so much as they just kind of tumble out

not to pollute the thread but this reminds me a lot about the way Donald Trump gives speeches. Like Joel, he has a knack for the catchy, like Joel, he doesn't put a lot of labor into getting everything locked down tight, so like Joel, he reveals a lot of unpleasant interior material, but not really by design.

I can't imagine he has a better record in his catalog

Nylon Curtain IMO. His strongest LP.

There's a clip where he calls "I really wish I was less of a thinking man, and more a fool who's not afraid of rejection" the "key line" of the song. It's telling, I think, that it's a line concerning the speaker rather than Diane. This is one where I think he's *aware* of how the woman in the song, her supposed loneliness and sad TV-sleeping fate, are less a real person dancing at the club and more a projection in the mind of the man.

otm. this one starts out sounding like it's going to be yet another song about billy interpreting flat-out rejection as mixed signals but then, yeah, he turns it around and points the finger at himself. or throws the rock at himself, if you will. this is the song that finally pays off the title of the album. this is where he kinda sorta gets it.

musically, this is another one, like "all for leyna," that has completely won me over before he sings a note. the electric piano sound is new wave bubblegum cheese gold. and yeah those guitar stabs on top of it. delicious.

do people not like the sound of the (farfisa?) organ solo? i think it's a perfect new wave touch. (and is that richie playing it? the liner notes seem to credit him, not billy, with all organ.)

does this album totally fall apart at the end like the stranger?

The next song is pretty rough.....

good ol reliably unreliable billy

yeah i like the organ just fine. once again wish billy was more inclined to throw covers into his setlist - "this beat goes on / switchin' to glide" would have been a fun one.

i believe it's richie, who did organ duty on a lot of tracks as we've seen before (e.g. "Only The Good Die Young," where he'd switch directly from the organ part to the sax solo). billy's at the piano banging out the main rhythm, and i'm assuming this was still recorded as a live full-band take as we've heard about on the couple of albums. can't find any vintage live performances, but in 21st century concerts that's the setup - billy at piano, and another dude on a moog doing the organ part.

Yeah gotta say I am loving "Glass Houses" so far too. Probably my favorite album cover of his as well

really love the guitar stings in Sleeping With Television On

last 2 have been a little Elvis Costello-y especially i. his delivery... I Dont Want To Be Alone also reminded me a bit of Bruce Springsteen? i cant put my finger on why tho. Maybe just bc he seemed a tiny bit more laid back or something

now imagine Don Henley singing it

NO

well, nah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um9Cxp87nmw

C'était Toi (You Were the One), with its extended sections in French prepared by a translator-for-hire, is Billy's attempt at a "Michelle" type number. In describing how it went over in front of French audiences, Joel compares it to the initial reception of "Springtime For Hitler" in The Producers, and claims the promoter told him "they thought you were singing in Polish." It's probably the closest thing on the album to a 52nd Street track, suggesting an alternate, yachtier course Billy could have charted into the 80s.

the french is pointless, the hook should be better (or there should be more of a hook in general), but i really enjoy the yachty riff and the way it meets with the chorus ("you were the onlyyy one" dunna dun dun dun!)

freaks and geeks seems to be the primary generator of youtube comments for this song

The electric piano brings this closer to H&O territory than the last song, and the French part is another tip of the hat to McCartney.

Between this and the "now you parlez vous francais" line in Don't Ask Me Why, I'm glad he got over his "lol French" phase.

Not the worst thing he ever cut but boy does it throw off the momentum of the album for me. Should have been a b-side or set aside for another draft and another album - unfortunately we face Joel's apparent unwillingness to ever write one minute of music more than strictly required to fulfill an LP order. I think the album as a whole would feel tighter and more exciting if he'd just knocked out a completely generic three-chord rocker about getting dumped, or a Ramones cover, or a fired-up remake of one of the "songs in the attic." Or, maybe best fitting the spirit of the album: a "Kansas City / Hey Hey Hey" type medley, stringing together rockabilly, girl group and garage-band classics in a new wave style. Throw some real energy into it and that'd make a fine album closer. Oh well.

You say that now about the French phase, but wait until we get to "Nous n'avons pas Allumé le Feu!"