Hit Parade: Still Billy Joel to Me Edition

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2020

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A special Hit Parade announcement: Like many media organizations at the moment, Slate is getting hit pretty hard by what's going on with the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. We want to continue doing our work, providing you with all our great podcasts, news and reporting, and we simply cannot do that without your support. So we're asking you to sign up for Slate Plus, our membership program. It's just $35 for the first year, and it goes a long way to supporting us in this crucial moment. As part of this effort, we're going to be making Full Hit Parade episodes available to Slate Plus members only. To listen to the episode in full, and episodes in future months, you'll need to become a Slate Plus member. This is the best way to support our show and our work, and we hope you will pitch in if you can. Your membership will also give access to everything on Slate.com, you'll get ad-free versions of this and other shows, and you'll get bonus segments and bonus episodes of other Slate podcasts. Plus, once you become a member, you can sign up to do trivia with Chris Molanphy on Hit Parade—“The Bridge” episodes. Please sign up today at slate.com/hitparadeplus. We thank you for your support. On this preview episode of the show: 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. This is the story of Billy Joel's hits, and the pastiches he crafted to stay on top of the charts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, Hip Parade listeners, what you're about to hear is a preview of our latest episode.
0:07.0	As we announced in mid-April, slate, like many media organizations at the moment, is getting hit pretty hard by what's going on
0:15.9	with the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
0:20.5	We need your help to continue producing this show and all the other work we do at Slate.
0:28.0	So we're asking you to sign up for Slate Plus, our membership program.
0:33.6	It's just $35 for the first year and it will go a long way towards supporting us at this crucial moment.
0:42.4	Sign up at sleet crucial moment. Sign up at slate.com slash hit parade plus
0:46.4	and you'll get to hear this and every episode of hit parade in full. That's slate dot com slash hit parade in full. That's Slate.com slash Hit Parade Plus. Thanks. And now your episode
0:58.6	preview. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from
1:11.7	Coast to Coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst
1:15.2	pop critic and writer of Slates Why Is This Song Number One series.
1:21.6	On today's show, 40 years ago in April 1980, a well-established pop star was making his comeback into the top 10 on the
1:35.4	billboard charts. In popular parlance this guy was nicknamed the piano man
1:41.8	only piano wasn't the most prominent instrument on his latest hit.
1:48.0	It was basically a guitar rock song. Sure, way back in the mix on you may be right.
1:55.0	Sure, way back in the mix on You May Be Right. You could hear its singer and songwriter Billy
2:09.0	Joel pounding away on the piano as usual. But not much about this song was usual for Joel. It was
2:18.4	snotty, snide, snarky. Not the first time he'd tried on that attitude, but the released in 1980, down played the piano entirely.
2:43.0	But while this was the
2:45.0	satisfaction
2:46.0	but it's just a panther fee
2:48.0	it's not the real thing
	...

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