Favorite Song Friday: My Life

So I was reading this recent interview with the late Sir William Joel of Long Islandington. And a few things hit me.

One was the understated badassness of this bit:

I remember the show at the Garden after the Charlottesville riot when you wore a Star of David. How do you decide when you want to make your beliefs known?  

Wearing the Star of DavidAt his show on August 21, 2017, Joel sported a Star of David on his jacket. At the same concert, Joel had images of Trump officials like Anthony Scaramucci and Sean Spicer — as well as James Comey and Sally Yates — projected behind him as he and guest Patty Smyth performed Scandal’s “Goodbye to You.” wasn’t about politics. To me, what happened in Charlottesville was like war. When Trump said there were good people on both sides — there are no good Nazis. There are no good Ku Klux Klan people. Don’t equivocate that shit. I think about my old man: Most of his family was murdered in Auschwitz.The story of the Joel family’s experience with Nazi Germany is told in full in the 2001 German documentary The Joel Files.The story of the Joel family’s experience with Nazi Germany is told in full in the 2001 German documentary The Joel Files. He was able to get out but then got drafted and went in the U.S. Army. He risked his life in Europe to defeat Nazism. A lot of men from his generation did the same thing. So when those guys see punks walking around with swastikas, how do they keep from taking a baseball bat and bashing those crypto-Nazis over the head? Those creeps are going to march through the streets of my country? Uh-uh. I was personally offended. That’s why I wore that yellow star. I had to do something, and I didn’t think speaking about it was going to be as impactful.

The other was how very much criticism has taken its toll on him over the years. He denies it...again and again and again. He has to, because he very noticeably keeps bringing it up again and again and again. And that sucks. Because someone who's accomplished as much as the late Sir William Joel of Long Islandington has should really be delighted with their life.

As one of the guys who's sometimes publicly mocked him ever so gently and lovingly, allow me to take a moment to talk about one of the many Billy Joel songs I really truly love and the thing about it which never ceases to impress me, no matter how many times I've heard it.

"My Life" is quintessential Billy Joel, with a lyric that aims for John Lennon, with perhaps some of Chuck Berry's braggadocio, but falls short (mainly in the second verse, which starts great but fizzles into empty albeit rhyming platitudes). Meanwhile, musically, it's a composition of which Paul McCartney himself could be proud, insanely melodic and with a plethora of hooks, including a few which are strictly instrumental and never actually translate to the vocal line.

It's got a compelling (and not entirely dissimilar to "Silly Love Songs") intro that starts quietly and builds until the whole band kicks in and delivers the first hook, just before the second hook is introduced—and again it's only this second hook which will actually turn into a vocal line and even there only as a faint vocal in the outro. Who does that? A guy who can produce the kind of melodies that the late Sir William Joel of Long Islandington can, that's who.

So the song is pretty standard, from a structural point of view. With one exception, but it's a pretty big one, and that's what always strikes me about this one. It's not that the verses and the chorus share the same chord changes and melody, although that is kinda interesting, especially given that the intro and outro—which normally would share either the verse or chorus changes—are different. It's the placement of the bridge and the treatment of the second chorus, as well as the way he repeatedly goes to the intro/outro music, using it almost as a substitute for a guitar or keyboard solo.

The song goes:

• intro
• first verse
• intro/break
• first chorus
• first bridge
• second verse
• intro/break
• second chorus
• second bridge
• intro/break
• third chorus
• outro

For the second chorus, though, he has Liberty DeVitto bring the drums down to half-time, lending (or trying to) gravitas, to the first two lines. Then things kick back in and we go to the break section. Then back to the chorus for a third and final time...but only half of it. And then we're into the extended outro, which is just the intro/break section, but with vocals this time, singing the keyboard hook from the original intro.

It's an odd construction. There are only two verses, he keeps going back to the intro music, and the song gets heaviest almost right before it closes it out—and then once it does get ready to close out, it hangs around for a surprisingly (and pleasantly) long time. It's...weird. It feels like a standard 8-bar pop song, structurally, but it's really not. It's slightly, or maybe even more than slightly, askew, but you don't really notice the first few dozen times you hear it, as you're just caught up by Joel's phenomenally catchy melodies and compelling lyrics.

But he's the late Sir William Joel of Long Islandington, a guy who's a master of songcraft, so he undoubtedly knows what he's doing. Which makes it even more perplexing and, for me, at least, appealing.

Well done, good sir. Well done indeed.

Reconsider Me (maybe what Sir William was trying to write)

A couple of days back my partner here at Reason to Believe took a brilliant surgical look at of one of the more popular "love" songs of this past generation, Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are." Like Scott I too have always been perplexed by this odd and unsettling track that pretty much led the way to mass stardom on BJ's finest album, The Stranger.

As Scott said, there is something off here, with these lyrics that Billy wrote in 1977. It sounds like a straightforward love song, and Lord knows it's been treated as such by countless newlyweds at their weddings, but it isn't. It just isn't.

Here's the part that always irked me, at the song's bridge:

I need to know that you will always be
The same old someone that I knew
What will it take 'till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you

The word that pops to mind as the best one-word to describe this song is pretty much right there in that first line: "need." Because this song, above all else, is remarkably needy. It is so terribly insecure. Which, hey, is right as rain in so many pop songs. What is "Yesterday" if not needy? What is "Wouldn't It Be Nice?" What is, for that matter, "Hungry Heart" and a huge chunk of Bruce Springsteen's catalogue if not plainly, desperately needy? Not to mention the Holy Trinity of troubling 1980s desperation: "Every Breath You Take," "The One I Love" and "With or Without You."

Billy Joel could have gone for this, the desperate route that knows it's desperate. But he doesn't. And that's my problem with "Just The Way You Are." It's needy, but it doesn't want to be. It wants to be in control, completely in sync with what the object of his desire is all about and is looking for. Only it isn't. And as a result it's totally unreliable.

Think of some of the lines that come earlier in the song. Like this one:

Don't go trying some new fashion
Don't change the color of your hair
You always have my unspoken passion
Although I might not seem to care 

I don't want clever conversation
I never want to work that hard
I just want someone that I can talk to
I want you just the way you are

Nothing Joel has written earlier in the song (especially "although I might not seem to care") indicates to us that he does unconditionally believe in her. And yet that's exactly what he expects from her—"What will it take 'till you believe in me the way that I believe in you?" It's not true; it's simply inconsistent with everything else he's said in this song. And for the author of a love letter to demand one thing from a lover and not expect to give it in return? It's just not fair.

And this would all be fine if Billy Joel acknowledged his inconsistency here, and maybe attached a level of desperation to it. Which of course Isaac Hayes does in the extended, soulful version that Scott wrote about. But instead Billy just seems to want to play this out as a straight love song. He seems to think he's being sweet, when really he's being straight-out selfish. "I know I don't treat you right all the time. But I need—NEED—to know you still love me. I have no plans to prove this to you, but you have to reassure me. REASSURE me."

And it led me to this. Scott gave you the Late Sir William Joel of Long Islandington. I give you the even later Sir Warren Zevon of West Hollywoodshire.

And I give you the song that, I suspect, deep down Sir William may have been aiming for with "Just The Way You Are." I could be all wet, but this is how I hear it. Warren's lovely and regretful tune from his vaunted 1987 comeback album, Sentimental Hygiene

Here are the lyrics, which for a songwriter as challenging as Warren Zevon could often be are actually fairly straightforward:

If you're all alone, and you need someone
Call me up and I'll come running
Reconsider me
Reconsider me

If it's still the past that makes you doubt
Darling that was then and this is now
Reconsider me
Reconsider me

And I'll never make you sad again
'Cause I swear I've changed since then
And I promise I will never make you cry

Let's let bygones be forgotten
Reconsider me
Reconsider me
 
You can go and be
What you want to be
It'll be all right if we disagree

I'm the one who cares

And I hope you see
That I'm the one who loves you
Reconsider me

Let's let bygones be forgotten
Reconsider me
Reconsider me

And I'll never make you sad again
'Cause I swear I've changed since then
And I promise I will never make you cry

As I said, I'm not sure I am even in the ballpark here, but this seems to be the song that Billy was trying to write. Only he didn't.

There are a few similarities. Both eschew a traditional verse-chorus-verse setup and instead choose to punctuate each verse with the title of the song, rather than drop it into a repeated chorus. Both have a mid-tempo, pop feel to them. Both employ familiar structures of the eras in which they were produced. "Just the Way You Are" has that electric-piano, light jazzy sound so familiar with mid-70s pop songs, while "Reconsider Me" has that glossy 80s studio polish we've heard time and time again. Both are very much of their time.  

But with "Reconsider Me," Warren Zevon (or the narrator of the song) acknowledges how much he's screwed up in this relationship (it's right there in the title) and he's pleading for a second chance. He's not really making any excuses, and he's making it clear he'd rather forget all that old bad stuff and just move on. Which is not dissimilar to what Billy does.

And perhaps it's not fair to expect Billy Joel, who was in his 20s when he wrote "Just The Way You Are," to have the same level of self-realization that Zevon did at 40 when he wrote "Reconsider Me." That's important; writers need to have time to grow and mature into themselves. Could Bruce Springsteen have written "Tougher Than the Rest" at age 26, rather than age 38? Probably not.

Yet still, it's a failing in "Just the Way You Are" because the song is too contradictory for us to trust what the narrator is saying. To beat a tired and worn cliche into the ground, he wants to have his cake and eat it to. He wants unconditional approval from her, yet makes it clear there have been times and will be times when he's unable to give it in return. It's just too needy to be honest.

To the point where I can't help but think if Billy had written this one with the same sentiment in mind, the line "Reconsider me" would be replaced with, "But you still love me, right?"

Warren Zevon isn't seeking reassurance in "Reconsider Me." Earned or not, he's seeking a second chance, maybe a renewal. But in "Just the Way You Are," all I hear is Billy Joel seeking  reassurance. And it seems pretty clear from the words that he hasn't earned it.

Just the Way You Are

I have very mixed feelings about the late Sir William Joel of Long Islandington. On the one hand, I grew up liking a lot of his stuff—primarily, but not exclusively, the hits. On the other hand, even as a kid, there was often something about even the songs of his I liked that made me kinda squint and think, "really?" Sometimes it was an awkward lyric, or what I took to be embarrassing dressing up in new wave clothes for "It's Still Rock & Roll to Me." I was about 11 the first time I thought, "man, it seems this guy's trying way too hard to seem tough," an impression that (his amateur boxing aside) never entirely left me. But whatever. I've always preferred melody to lyrics—although in the best of worlds, both are good—and there was no question the dude could write a killer melody and I really liked Liberty DeVitto's drumming.

And what sums his problems up more than his multiple-Grammy-winning-electric-piano-laden-mega-smash, "Just the Way You Are"?

Don't go changing to try and please me
You never let me down before
Don't imagine you're too familiar
And I don't see you anymore
I would not leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far
I took the good times, I'll take the bad times
I'll take you just the way you are

Um. Okay. That's nice, I guess. Something about it seems kinda off, but okay. Let's keep going.

Don't go trying some new fashion
Don't change the color of your hair
You always have my unspoken passion
Although I might not seem to care

OH. That's why it seemed off: she's imagining he doesn't see her anymore because he's acting like he doesn't see her anymore. What the hell else could "you always have my unspoken passion, although I might not seem to care" mean?

I don't want clever conversation
I never want to work that hard
I just want someone that I can talk to
I want you just the way you are

Honest to pete, when I was 10 or whatever, this verse bothered the hell out of me. It felt like he was telling her actively wanted someone not very smart as a partner, someone he could not talk with, but talk to. And even at that age that just seemed totally jacked to me.

I need to know that you will always be
The same old someone that I knew
What will it take 'till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you

Dude. The reason she doesn't believe in you is because you're acting like you don't give a shit about her. You openly say you actively do not want her to change or grow, but to just to stay in her place, like she's a bug encased in amber. This isn't rocket science, man.

I said I love you and that's forever
And this I promise from my heart
I couldn't love you any better
I love you just the way you are

You know, I'm not claiming I'm the greatest husband in the world. (I am, in fact, I'm just not claiming it.) And "I love you just the way you are" is a really sweet line. But when it's preceded by "I couldn't love you any better," well...I mean, the thing is, I do love my wife better than I did 10 years ago and I loved her 10 years ago better than I had 10 years before that. You do something a lot, you get better at it. So, sure, I realize that for some couples, it doesn't work that way—that's just reality. But if you're supposed to be writing a love song, you don't come right out and say that. (Or you do and you've got a subversive masterpiece. This ain't that.)

To be fair, I'm not the first to criticize the song, and my ambivalence is pretty unimpeachable: the late Sir William Joel himself has often claimed he never really liked the song much, and only released it either because Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow insisted he had to (his version of the story) or because the album would have been too short otherwise (his producer's version of the story). Either way, he seems to have had some idea that it was perhaps somewhat flawed. I'm sure he cashed the checks of course, as well he should.

Why am I doing a half-assed fisking of a 37-year-old song that does have a lovely melody and some, let's be honest, groovy 1970's electric piano and sultry sax? Because I just heard a cover version of it that throws into even more stark relief the issues with the original version.

Because I think this is what the late Sir William Joel of Long Islandington was initially going for—same melody, same lyrics (but with a different time signature) and oh such a different vibe:

Leaving one to wonder: is there aught the late great Isaac Hayes couldn't cover and made sound amazing?

(The first 2:47 seconds—nearly as long as the 45" version of the late Sir William Joel of Long Islandington's version of the song—omitted because, well...okay, the late great Isaac Hayes did like the sound of his own voice talking talking talking before getting down to the business of singing the hell out of something. And on the other hand, he's the one playing the sax solo because I mean really you know?) 

Hold On

I more or less missed Wilson Phillips. I knew of them, thanks to Rolling Stone, but when they were hitting it big I was finishing my first senior year of college and living in a house without cable, so no music television, and pop radio wasn't really a part of my life at that point. (Few things were, aside from beer, comics, Springsteen, R.E.M. and my girlfriend.) ((You'll note schoolwork was nowhere on that list, which may explain why I needed a second senior year of college.))

But "Hold On" was big enough that even I heard it, even if I barely noticed that I did. So the first time I really truly remember paying any attention to it was during its utterly glorious inclusion in "Bridesmaids." Its use was fantastic, but then, of course, so was the song.

I've never liked self-help songs. Take Billy Joel's "Tell Her About It," for instance. (Please.)

While I liked his An Innocent Man album, in general—although his dancing here makes Springsteen's in "Dancing in the Dark" look practically Michael Jacksoneque (and Rodney Dangerfield's acting makes his own turn in Caddyshack appear Laurence Olivieronian—this one track always struck me as an only slightly less unctuous "Dear Alex & Annie" sermon.

(Good golly, how adorbs is Annie? [And thank goodness she and Alex had their names on their shirts—otherwise, how could we ever have told them apart? Also, and this is true, DT dressed like Alex until he was nearly 20. Sadly, it's still his best look ever.] I can't believe "Dear Alex & Annie" was created by the great Lynn Ahrens, writer of many of the best Schoolhouse Rock songs, as well as, later, several major Broadway shows. But we don't care about Broadway. Schoolhouse Rock, on the other hand...)

Which is why (heresy alert) I've never cared for one of the more beloved songs amongst my cohorts, by one of my very favorite artists ever.

I like the verses. I like the music. I like how attractive both singers are. I even like the philosophy. But the lyrics to the chorus just set my teeth on edge and the preciousness of Bush's vocals, which can be so effective in other contexts, just...no. Not for me. The entire thing, together, is just not nearly removed enough from dear "Dear Alex and Annie." It's the only song on So I skip every. single. time. I'd take ten "We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)"s, or even a dozen "This Is the Picture (Excellent Birds)"s over a single "Don't Give Up." I'm a monster, I know.

Which is why I was surprised to hear this cover of "Hold On" and discover it wasn't like biting on tinfoil. It was...well, it was awesome.



Why does this work so well? What's the secret? Is it the seriousness of the vocals? Is it that the bar is set lower? Is it that it's got no pretensions—it's not a groundbreaking Serious Artist performing a Message Song, or a wannabe badass rocker hearkening back to his late 50s/early 60s roots for a lark? Is it just that it's just a great take on a fun pop song?

I'd reckon it's all the above. And most of all, it's got the best melody and a good beat and you can dance to it. And that's usually the trump card, after all.