Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - Still Billy Joel to Me Part 1

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Music, Tv & Film, Arts

4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

So, sure—Billy Joel’s first Top 40 hit, way back in 1974, was “Piano Man,” and the nickname stuck. But for a guy who became famous sitting behind 88 keys, few of his biggest hits are really piano songs. In fact, on all three of his No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, keyboards are not the primary instrument.

The truth is, Joel isn’t the Piano Man, he’s the pastiche man. He has openly admitted to borrowing genre tropes, vocal styles, and even specific song hooks from his Baby Boom-era heroes, from Ray Charles to the Beatles to the Supremes. He’s been a jazzy crooner, a saloon balladeer, an anthem rocker, even a pseudo-punk. And on his most hit-packed album, he literally tried on a different song mode on every single—and was rewarded for it. This month, Hit Parade breaks down the uncanny success of pop magpie Billy Joel, the guy who would try anything for a hit: the next phase, new wave, dance craze, any ways.

Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch and Kevin Bendis

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening Ad-Free on Amazon Music.
0:08.5	Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate Magazine, about the hits from
0:15.4	coast to coast.
0:16.8	I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series.
0:27.3	On today's show, 40 years ago, in April 1980, a well-established pop star was making his comeback into the top ten on the billboard charts.
0:39.9	In popular parlance, this guy was nicknamed the Piano Man.
0:46.2	Only piano wasn't the most prominent instrument on his latest hit.
0:51.7	It was basically a guitar rock song.
1:04.6	Sure, way back in the mix on You May Be Right.
1:09.3	You could hear its singer and songwriter Billy Joel,
1:13.7	pounding away on the piano, as usual. But not much about this song was usual for Joel.
1:21.4	It was snotty, snide, snarky. Not the first time he'd tried on that attitude, but the first time he'd made it the
1:30.3	first single from a new album. In fact, every single that Billy Joel, hit machine, released in
1:43.3	1980, downplayed the piano entirely.
1:47.0	But while this was the most rock forward that Joel had been in his career to date, it was hardly the first time he'd tried on a new style and scored a hit with it.
2:13.6	The truth is, Billy Joel never really was the piano man.
2:22.0	Not entirely, anyway.
2:24.9	Some of his most famous piano standards weren't actually Billboard chart hits in their day.
2:31.3	Left their more behind, I'm in a New York... hits in their day. And even on the massive Grammy winning smashes, keyboards were just one tool in Jol's bag of
2:49.6	tricks.
2:50.6	The song, not the tinkling of the ivories,
2:54.3	was what made Joel a hitmaker.
	...

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