Why Billy Joel writes songs differently from everyone else 

Of course he hates songwriting. All his songs are SHIT. He looks like a street boxer or a Cab driver.

Absolutely. Billy Joel's lack of number one hits and the time it took for him to get album traction, was a bit of an eye opener for me. I got Piano Man long before it was popular (in Australia). And when you think - he'd done Piano Man, Turnstiles, and The Stranger before he got reasonable traction with 52nd Street. The music business is a bit idiotic sometimes.

He is a magic man as a pianist and song crafter! I love his songs!

In the case of The Stranger, the first seven tracks are so brilliant that the last two feel like filler.

I love seeing the respect for Billy! Nobody loves him more than me & I say he’s the greatest singer songwriter to ever step foot on this earth. On the music end, he is so colorful. Everything sounds unique & it can stand on its own even without lyrics. Not one song sounds like another. You get the feeling of “pressure” before a single word is said! He’s a rare classically trained pianist while also being a natural composer. Those 2qualities do not go hand in hand. It’s usually one or the other but he is equally phenomenal with both, again I can’t stress how rare that is. Lyrically what separates him from most is that they all make sense from start to finish. A lot of songs have lyrics that sound cool & creative but don’t really mean anything. I’m not knocking them cause some of my favorite songs are like that & they still evoke feelings from me but Billy never did that. All his words make sense & that’s insanely hard when you take into consideration that he has to do this in the confines of a melody. That puts limits on a writer but he pulled it off flawlessly every time. In songs like “Downeaster Alexa” & “Goodnight Saigon” he gets the entire experience down perfectly in under 4min inside the limited space of a melody. His talent is unmatched cause he’s done this every time. Never once did he take the easy route & just phone it in. He stands alone & although he’s beloved worldwide I feel he still doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. I just have so much love & respect for him. Love that you guys see it as well!

I think that's the difference between Joel, Jackson and Prince. Imo the latter did too much and many songs didn't sound finished to the best level.

Leonard Cohen admitted this decades ago. It's not a huge secret.

Gordon Lightfoot would go off on his own for a few weeks, and make himself do nothing but sit down at a desk and chair, worn a notepad.

I actually think songs that drop out of the sky are a result of years of listening and researching via the subconscious. Kind of like a kitchen making a meal and putting it out for the waiter (being the artist) to take to the table. I also think that it probably happens to musicians who aren't formally trained more often, at least all the anecdotes I've heard have supported that. I think you can lose that sense of "magic" once you learn too much.

Exactly. 3.5 minutes full of conflident lyric, performance, harmony, instrumentation and arrangement sounds inherently like it's dropped out of the sky, especially when you're just hearing a song for the first time. It's a very different thing behind the curtain, with a lot of staff and moving parts in the industry, no matter how quickly a song's lyrics and chords are written.

Costello said anything worth doing is difficult. I can only infer he made great efforts. But he also said the key word in creating is to PLAY. He didn't say work, so I guess that's different from what Joel is saying.

Clearly you love those lyrics that you misquoted.

@@chaosordeal294 lmaaoo understand the emotions my friend👉🏼👈🏼

Correct, but it’s not 30 or 40 songs. Billy even mentioned it on an interview that he basically comes with 10-12 song ideas.

Of all the artists I've heard over the last 5 or 6 decades, I can honestly say he's one of the very few whose songs are all different from one another. Most artists develop a sound or style and then keep on producing music in that style. I don't know if that's because that style is what they like the best or because, once they get a following, they don't want to take a chance on losing that following; I expect both are factors. But Billy seems unafraid to write songs of different styles and put them together on albums and he's obviously got enough fans that they keep buying the recordings. I understand he regularly books Madison Square Gardens himself and sells out multiple night runs there playing to his many fans. Not many artists can do that!

​@@hughmungus1767 You are exactly right. Billy wrote for himself; the music business can go pound sand. He also explored various styles, as David mentioned. 52nd Street was jazz-influenced; Glass Houses was rock; The Nylon Curtain was his homage to George Martin and The Beatles; An Innocent Man was his tribute to the roots of rock and roll (late '50s and early '60s). I don't know how to classify Storm Front: "The Downeaster Alexa" is a singer-songwriter sea shanty, inspired by the style of Gordon Lightfoot, then we also have a straight-up rocker like "I Go to Extremes." Billy Joel cannot be pigeonholed, and that's one of his strengths.

​@@Prof_Jeff🎉🎉🎉 thank you for comments i found many interesting information about Billy Joel

My fave is Costello - I feel the same way about his albums. They aren't hits and filler - well, he never did have a lot of hits - lol. But no filler.

Born wayyy after his time period but he has sooo much more raw talent than most artists today in my opinion 😮😮😮 blown away

You are spot on.. Merv Griffin heard BillyJoel playing Piano Man in an LA airport bar. The next morning he played and sang it verbatim on his talk show after hearing it only once. I watched that show live.

I've seen Dylan 24 times, Neil Young and Springsteen 4x, Paul Simon 3x, Van Morrison 3x, Steve Earle 12x, Ray Charles, the Eagles, McCartney.

I worked in a record store (here in Canada) when The Stranger came out and it was VERY successful here. We sold a lot of copies! Before that time, the song Piano Man had been popular for people that listened to AM radio and Captain Jack tended to get played on the less commercial FM stations; virtually none of the other songs on the other albums were played on the radio.

That's just a weird metric. The Stranger peaked at #2 in the US, NZ, CA and AUS. It was the 4th-best selling album of 1978 in the US, won 2 Grammys and has now sold over 11 million copies in the US alone. It was also the very first album to be released on CD, in Japan, 1982.

BIlly Joel's "The Stranger" is the only album I've ever known where I've heard every single song on the radio incidentally. Like, at no point was it a some station doing an entire side as a promo or something, nope, just every song being played at some time or another.

I've probably listened to that album a hundred times.

I loved The Stranger ❤

That particular track was very telling. Billy himself has stated on several occasions that he felt with that album, he had "spoken his piece" musically. He wanted to go out at the top of his game, not fade away into irrelevancy by churning out low-quality music for the sake of releasing something.

Do you realize now that the librarian scammed you? Borrowing from the library is supposed to be free.

@@Prof_Jeff “Spoken his peace.” 🤦🏻‍♂️

​@@Frankie5Angels150You can call borrowing something from the library 'renting' and it means the same thing. In this context, there's no implication of money.

Walking away from pop songwriting is nothing to be particularly impressed about. On the contrary, it is rather disappointing. Can't imagine Dylan or McArtney ever completely shutting the door. You never know when inspiration will strike. OTOH, it sounds like songwriting comes harder for Joel. It is a chore.

Thanks,I really do appreciate you been my fan and I will love to hear from you

God yes.

I just learned to play this song, it’s amazing how it’s structured. Truly a master of his craft!

Definitely is!

and saddest 💔

I agree! Brilliant!

Totally agree - fantastic song!

He's stated that he's a songwriter, not a song stylist. He always pictured someone else singing his songs.

these comments all bring me so much joy. as someone who he has been my favourite artist for 47 years, it brings me so much joy to learn that i was right

Funny that when I 1st got his albums way back when, i didn't listen to them as intensely as I do now and I love them 3 times more now than I did then...

Until The Night is a fantastic song. Great story telling and musically builds to a wonderful crescendo but I would find it impossible to say which is my favourite of his is, it all depends on my mood

same here but my favourite is Summer Highland Falls

​@@thewordofgog"A bottle of red, a bottle of white... Whatever mood you're in tonight. I'll meet you any time you want in our Italian restaurant."

Thanks Nick!

Thanks,I really do appreciate you been my fan and I will love to hear from you

Good one there buddy I see what you did

Wish Springsteen would’ve done the same!!

@@BT-be8rh Amen!

In the middle of the night. I was walking in my sleep. To jungle of doubt (valley of fear). To the river so deep. I was searching for something - something so undefined. That it could only be seen. By the eyes of the blind. In the middle of the night.

Cold Spring Harbor is quite good. I eventually found it on vinyl in the '80s. Also have it on cassette and CD.

That is one album I never really listened to that much... Yes, I know it was his first album...

Thanks very much, I appreciate the kind words.

@@davidhartley94 With all due respect, in American English (and, I would think, British as well), it could be "differently *from* everyone else," or "differently *than* everyone else" -- but _not_ "differently *to* everyone else."

I agree. I see great potential as well

The stranger was a great album that i liked the most. Until the river of dreams came out. I personally find it a more vivid album

@@jimreadey4837 Different TO is quite common in British English, in my experience speaking with them nearly every day in a business context. Another strange one is that Europeans will "take" a decision rather than "make" one.

trust the process! maybe contradicts the idea of the video but i think all we can do is keep writing and honing our craft and putting things out there for feedback, even if we don’t feel it’s good enough or ready to share … “though you can see when you’re wrong, you know you can’t always see when you’re right” ;)

One of my favorites

@@missuntitledblog Thanks,I really do appreciate you been my fan and I will love to hear from you

Vienna my favorite song as well.

"Los Angelenos" is a great track! Listen to the live version from Songs in the Attic, if you haven't already.