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

omg @ chipmunk version LOOOOL that is hysterical

Well, to add to the embarrassing recording goofs, I've still got the wrong version up there! Sorry, Billy! The Youtube above is actually the Songs in the Attic live version from ten years later, which did chart. It's sort of hard to pin down these versions but give me a second here.

that Songs in the Attic version is the one i already knew. interesting!

So, the full, pitch-corrected 1983 remix of the album is here; it's also on Spotify. Individual YouTubes are a mishmash, with both the live hit and the original Chipmunk version getting slapped up with the CSH album cover, and a bevy of do-it-yourself corrected versions. But basically this is what we should listen to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXAKedxxVe4

It's very interesting to compare the "corrected original" to the "live hit" versions - the lingering psychedelic "let us be like children together in the garden" tweeness of the earlier recording gets ironed out of it, and he adds a pinch of harder vocal grit to the second pass through "she touches me, I get turned around." Essentially, he brings it much closer to his signature late-70s sound, though he retains the very, very stripped-down arrangement.

To be honest, I've never really strongly connected with this song - good melody, great opening line... without the Chipmunk thing, and with the right promotional backing, you imagine he could have gotten at least a regional hit out of this. But it's one of these "she's great, she's great, she's really great" kind of songs without conflict, narrative or rhythm section... makes it a bit too easy for it to just drift by. I do think I like it better in its original, rather less professional incarnation. Elsewhere, I love Joel's grand-entertainer, crowd-pleaser populism, but on these first couple albums I like also hearing this kid - affectations and fumbles and evident desire to be Paul McCartney and all.

i enjoy the way he over-enunciates as a young man. like someone said to him it's important that we understand all the words

totally!

it's probably more proto-air supply than anything tbh

but even in that category it's head and shoulders above. like, compared with the overwrought verging on gross "baby ima want you" syrup that will be pouring into listeners ears in the coming years, it's great

Just based on this song, in a vacuum, I would've expected him to turn into more of a Manilow-type than he ever ended up being.

the path of earnest songwriting is fraught with danger

it's funny I haven't heard joel and manilow compared much - sure their careersan attitudes and styles are quite different, but as showtunes holdouts and staples of the adult contemporary charts... idk

joel has way better songwriting (as this thread will hopefully bear out) - it's his abilities as a storyteller that navigated him out of those waters imo

manilow had good hooks but his lyrics are pretty bad, more like long commercial jingles

though i agree with dr c that there's not much to the lyric on "she's got a way," it's A-plus compared to most of what we're going to be listening to over the next week and a half, simply by virtue of billy not trying too hard. he's infatuated with a girl, he says so, he rhymes "about her" with "without her," he tosses in a bridge, he's done. he can do worse, much worse, and he will. and the melody sticks. a telling start to his career: he's a piano man with a gift for a hook and not a lot to say, not yet.

having not heard cold spring harbor in years, i miss the octave vocal leap that ends the song in the songs from the attic version. that was a nice touch.

This recording is from a 1980s remix correcting a legendary mastering goof on the original record

warning: they also re-recorded the backing tracks on a couple songs, without billy's involvement. the relationship between family productions' artie ripp, who signed him and owned these masters, deteriorated fast, and though billy quickly dumped him for columbia, ripp won a lot in the divorce: he owned a piece of billy's next ten (!) albums, and his logo appears on all of them.

christ that's awful, the music industry really is full of absolute bandits.

i love how he put out 'Greatest Hits I And II' as one CD/album, not bothering with the traditional 1 and 2 volumes separated by say half a decade like most folk.

http://www.thatericalper.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Attila-008.jpg

We're going to pretend this never happened?

re: Manilow and jingles, I had no idea he actually did some of that! "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there" - wow. Another difference, as Attila reminds us, is that for all his wistful balladeering, Billy wants to ROCK, and to be thought of as a rocker. This too connects him with Lennon and McCartney much more than Manilow or most of the other archetypal singer-songwriters.

I had floated the idea of including Attila and the Hassles in this thread but ppl pointed out that they were distinct "things," and anyway we were looking at a lot of tracks on this thread. But I think ppl should check 'em out - we could do a short pause after CSH and just say "today is Attila Day," rather than going track by track... idk!

I mean I guess people can also just talk about it whenever, also! Just thinking in the spirit of dedicated group experience or w/e.

The ratio of "discussion of Attila as music" to "lol, that cover" is historically quite lopsided. Not that I want to be the person to correct the imbalance - just sayin.

"She's Got a Way" is gr8 btw

Woah, hadn't realized we had started this!

So, "She's Got a Way." The version I know is the Greatest Hits one, which is the Songs From the Attic one, and this is my first time hearing the CSH version. I've always found it decent but unexceptional, not to mention tonally jarring within the chronological ordering of GH, sandwiched between the more, uh, muscular 80s material.

Listening to the original for the first time, I can see why he went with a later version. The mixing on CSH really is disgusting and I imagine that it will make the next 9 days of this thread something of a slog.

There is a piece from Entertainment Weekly from around the time of River of Dreams where Billy offered brief commentary on all of his albums. I tried to dig it up, but I couldn't find it. Also, EW's website is the worst.

Basically, as I recall, Billy dismisses the record due to the mastering error, claiming that he can't ever listen to it. Having my first taste of it just now, I can see why.

Tuneful prettiness. Not bad.

affectations and fumbles and evident desire to be Paul McCartney and all

Listening to the Chipmunk version you linked above (only being familiar with the GH version before) and given the year, it strikes me that this is definitely his attempt at re-writing "Maybe I'm Amazed."

CSH is canon, but I can't help but always thinking of Piano Man as his first record.

Similar to Bowie.

(Just thought I'd beat the rest of you to writing out that last sentence.)

(see also: warren zevon)

ATTENTION! NATALIE MAINES IS NOT A LESBIAN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPxllU2WUak

I know singers have been tweaking lyrics to suit their gender/orientation for decades, but shifting it from first-person to third-person changes the context too much.

centuries

The song's vagueness--he likes this woman, but can't quite isolate her particular qualities--nicely mirrors my own ambiguous feelings towards it.

It's a vague sentiment, sure, but it's light-years better than "Always a Woman," in which the message is "she's a heinous bitch but I like her anyway."

i like this, nice little song

love the cover, i love how period it looks, like it could be some long forgotten "lost classic" reissued by Light in the Attic

though I'm pretty impressed, for a first song on a first album this feels very much like a "Billy Joel" song, like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something

new goal of this listening thread: to pinpoint the moment he loses his hopeful high voice

The vagueness also makes it one of VERY FEW love songs that a father could plausibly dedicate to a daughter and have it come off in a not-totally-creepy way.

This may venture into uber-maudlin TMI territory, but: the line "she's got a smile that heals me" does in fact make me think of my daughter. I know it's corny as hell but there it is.

no that's otm

and lovely <3

for a first song on a first album this feels very much like a "Billy Joel" song, like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something

haha. but i'm not sure he truly finds his "billy joel" voice until track 3 on this album.

his hopeful high voice

sounds like he's channelling paul mccartney via emitt rhodes, who at this particular point in time was making better billy joel records than billy joel was.

true!

I don't know if its the pitch issue, but his voice sounds more shaky than I expected. Starting from "Piano Man" on, his voice has a confidence that he never loses - I just figured he always had it. Interesting to hear, actually

i think he's trying to go for lilting & comes off as slightly petrified haha

yeah track three is KEY to joel's entire steez going forward, looking forward to that.

agreed about trying to sound lilting. ATTILA reminds us that he did already know how to sing in a more forceful and confident manner, so this here is as much a "poetic" affectation as his bellows over there are an attempt to find his "hard rock" voice.

"maybe i'm amazed" is a very apt comparison - and it, too, wasn't a hit until a live album years later! I picture joel watching it rise on the charts in 1976, clenching his fists, blood boiling at the CSH screwups all over again, and swearing that if HE ever gets big enough to merit a live album, he knows just what the single will be and won't THAT show 'em all? "your song" also probably had to be on somebody's mind, the label's if not the artist's.

like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something running down the road, trying to loosen its load....

i'm guessing this song's about the other member of attila's wife (later to be his own).

i'd always understood that the "mastering error" is because they wanted to cram too many minutes of music onto the album.

so many wives...

like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something running down the road, trying to loosen its load....

― pplains, Monday, July 17, 2017 12:41 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you know...for some reason it never occurred to me till this very second that the protagonist of "Take it Easy" was shitting his pants

i'd lump the eagles in with billy as a band who didn't achieve their full aesthetic and identity until track three of their debut album. chug all night y'all.

i'd always understood that the "mastering error" is because they wanted to cram too many minutes of music onto the album

I hadn't heard that specifically about CSH. But I have heard that "Silver Springs" was kept off Rumours partly because the resulting length would have mean that they could just BARELY fit it in only by narrowing the grooves and unacceptably compromising the bass response.

Tangent: Interesting to think about the degree to which actual physical limitations were relevant - all of this in living memory. Les Paul was faking multitracking by ping-ponging, then the Beatles were on four tracks, then eight, then DSotM, then Steely Dan's automated mixes, then ProTools... all of this has happened within the lifespan of specific known humans. The time from the Wright brother's first flight to walking on muthaflippin moon? Many of us have grandparents who lived through both.

agreed about trying to sound lilting. ATTILA reminds us that he did already know how to sing in a more forceful and confident manner, so this here is as much a "poetic" affectation as his bellows over there are an attempt to find his "hard rock" voice.

Ah gotcha. I ain't heard CSH yet, so I sure as hell ain't heard Attila yet

so....does someone want me to post the next song? We can't break the streak.

I thought "She's Got a Way" was today's song?

i couldn’t tell! but i was watching it at a very low volume so no one in my household could roast me for listening to billy joel

i had no idea “just the way you are” was one part over and over again until i saw it in the video, hilarious, but soo tasteful and perfect for the song

drumeo guy is consistently one of the most awkward interviewers i’ve ever seen. earnest drum nerds from canada don’t always ask the most interesting questions in the moment on camera i guess

Mattt, to be fair, Prelude is probably the most challenging/weird/spiky drum part in the Joelian pop catalog.

Quite true. I guess I would have liked to see some Stranger or even “Rosalinda’s Eyes”.

STOP THE PRESSES

DRUDGE SIREN

It's time to TURN THE LIGHTS BACK ON. Brand new single coming February 1st. Pre-order here: https://t.co/Wtiyj8qJe3! pic.twitter.com/cN6BUh7gt5

— Billy Joel (@billyjoel) January 22, 2024

!!!

And: good use of a personal fave NYC landmark! That's the Loew's 175th Street / United Palace of Cultural Arts.

!!!

No, this sounds like it's Billy Joel song. I hear no traces of dance-punk on this at all from that snippet.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hear no traces of dance-punk on this at all from that snippet

it's still rock and roll to me

Should I get a Target Stanley Cup
And some wide-flared J. Crew pants?

If this new single begins with him taking a really deep breath before launching into EARTHQUAKE SERIES, NO MORE WALL, GEORGE BUSH, PANAMA...

The new single should begin with...

HUWUNN
TWOOOO
HWUN TWOO THREEE FAWW

and then break into a very slow ballad, Monty Python style

So, on a BJ interview with Howard Stern this week, he says that “Big Shot” is basically written from Mick Jagger’s point of view. Suddenly all the vocal exaggerations make sense — he’s a Brill Building guy writing something Jagger could sing, and acts out the part doing it.

Another "Mick" song is "You May Be Right"

I saw her today at the reception
Dom Perignon in her hand and a spoon up her nose

^ shit, wow, that's the first time I have noticed the intersection between those lyrics. I might need to lie down for a bit and process this information

is it time to turn the lights back on in this thread?

did i wait too long?

It kinda works for me except that the vocal doesn't sound like Billy at all somehow. If you told me it was an AI synthesis I would probably believe it and think it was mildly impressive.
I like that it's somewhat different to his previous stuff, and frankly it must have been pretty hard to break that long a silence (oddities notwithstanding).

yeah i wonder about that vocal too. it sounds like billy to me, but not 2024 billy

i don't hate it, but i think the arrangement sounds like AI too (i wouldn't have minded just piano, and i definitely wouldn't have minded billy's live band), and it really really could have used an actual chorus.

I like it, but man, it really reminds me of another song that I can't put my finger on.

Could have used an actual melody. I figure his voice must be Auto-Tuned to hell(?)

I like it, but man, it really reminds me of another song that I can't put my finger on.

End of the Road by Boyz II Men? Because that's what is somehow getting mixed up in my head.

I think his voice sounds like 2024 Billy, he sounds older here and of course the studio sands away the rough edges from live performances. did detect auto-tune as well which tends to 'youngify' voices.

The orchestra feels unnecessary, but then I realize we're talking about one of the last of the stadium acts. The piano dynamics would really stand out without all the backing.

Feels pre-Glass Houses in a good way. Maybe his first song without a "rock" band arrangement since then (though I'm not going back to the last few albums to check)?

since when did he use co-writers? I don't care, but it's striking.

I missed that there were co-writers (hadn't read about it until just now). Interesting that it involves the same guy who wrote Pussycat Dolls' legit-good "I Hate This Part." Guessing we'll hear at some point how this song was built.

my guess is the older you get, more time you spend on the toilet and sleeping, less time to write

I like it, but man, it really reminds me of another song that I can't put my finger on.

The changes and orchestration remind me of Chicago's "Hard to Say I'm Sorry"...

Which of the four of them wrote the line, "I see you now / As we're laying in the darkness"? Is the narrator wearing night-vision goggles(?)

Used the flashlight on his phone

It's his muse he can see in the darkness.

since when did he use co-writers?

i think this is more a case of the co-writers using him. if
i've got the story straight, they approached him, unsolicited, with an unfinished song and asked him to help top it off.

Hope they put bread in his jar

I think I thought it was "Only Time Will Tell" by Asia, but that's it's squirmier than that.

First impression: better than "Now and Then," but not exactly grabbing me. Hate what I'm hearing as auto-tuning, and the cheesy "arena drums plus strings" production. The actual song seems fine if not special - I could see it being a bit of a grower if it closed out an album, at the tail end of a mixed bag of pastiches on Side B.

yeah it’s a bit “Where’s the Orchestra” isn’t it

This damn song has been stuck in my head since the Grammys, and I’m not happy about it…

So apparently "Vienna" is having a moment? My 16-year-old daughter is working up a cover of it. It's not my favorite key but I will get there somehow.

i finally heard the new song & i like it well enough. enough to be interested in hearing more, anyway.

is Freddy Wexler any relation to Jerry Wexler? Freddy’s wikipedia entry starts at 2008 & eschews any real biographical info

BJ likes the disposable vapes apparently

So apparently "Vienna" is having a moment?

it's his tiktok hit!

It’s a good song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOf6CMbHPuA

Thru the ages

That was all right, but man, Billy. Don't give Elton any ideas.

i really really hate this guy and his music but ... i heard "Sleeping with the Television on" and didn't recognize it, so had to Shazam. really interesting to read everybody's thoughts on it here. i haven't listened to everything the man's made, but i agree this is a standout track, probably the best think i've ever heard from him. the rink organ is a shame but it's a pretty solid little power pop thing otherwise. can hear the comparisons to Joe Jackson but i think mostly it sounds like Squeeze in terms of the composition

killer song. my first karaoke performance coming out of the pandemic closure years!