Music Mondays: Billy Joel

"Turn the Lights Back On"

Last month on Sirius XM there was a temporary channel devoted entirely to the music of Billy Joel. With all due acknowledgment to my friend (and political philosopher), Robert Talisse, who absolutely hates Billy Joel, I have always been a fan. So, I found myself frequently tuning in to the Billy Joel channel (after the Super Bowl it switched to a soul-crushing Usher channel, ugh).

What I found so compelling about the Billy Joel channel was not just the music - songs I had listened to for my entire life - but also his stories about the songs and how he approached writing them. Given that he is one of the greatest storytellers in music history (I mean, come on, who isn’t interested in hearing more about Brenda and Eddie taking a trip on The Downeaster Alexa to hear The Piano Man play over at Captain Jack’s in Allentown . . . or something like that), it should come as no great surprise that he was good at telling stories about his songs.

My dad and I were listening to the channel while riding to Home Depot and I was telling my dad how cool it was that Billy Joel’s last real song was “Famous Last Words” on the River of Dreams album. That song certainly does stand as a great place to end things. It was as if he knew it was going to be the end when he wrote it:

These are the last words I have to say
That's why it took so long to write
There will be other words some other day
But that's the story of my life

That album came out in 1993. For those of you counting at home, that is 31 years ago.

I was a sophomore in high school at the time and remember vividly learning the drum track (by Manu Katché) for the song “Blond over Blue” on that album. For what it is worth, I still LOVE his snare sound.

Anyway, my point is that 30 years is a long time. How does one go that long without doing what one does. Indeed, without being who one is! Billy Joel isn’t/wasn’t just a performer, he is/was a songwriter. His legacy is not his singing voice, or even his piano playing, but his songs (yes, on which he played and sung). Those songs are the soundtrack for so very many lives (not Robert Talisse’s, but still). And yet, Billy Joel just put down his pen and didn’t pick it up again for 31 years. Yes, he famously played sold-out shows for decades and there was a popular Broadway show based on his music, but no new music.

Well, as Joel might say, “and so it goes.”

Let’s think together about some important philosophical lessons we can learn by looking at Joel’s silence for 31 years and then reflect on what to make of the fact that he just released a new song.