The 1976 song Billy Joel called a gift from heaven: “The better songs”
Billy Joel wasn’t the kind to spend his time making song after song every time he sat down at the piano.
It was always a labour for him to get a song that was halfway decent onto one of his records, and by the time it started eating up every part of his life, he knew that it was time to hang it up after 12 albums of great material. But even if the piano became his own worst enemy every other time he made a classic, sometimes the greatest tunes were the ones that fell out of the sky and beamed right into his head.
That’s easier said than done, though. Plenty of people have tried to recreate the sound that they heard in their dreams, but not everyone can have the same kind of musical translation that Paul McCartney could make. All Joel was looking for was coming up with something that was halfway catchy, and he wasn’t going to settle for something that would become annoying after the fourth or fifth time you’ve played.
I mean, think about any number of his songs. Aside from ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’, almost every tune he ever made has the potential to be someone’s favourite song, and that’s all down to how detailed the melodies are. Joel was writing the same way a painter would paint, and if it didn’t pass the test of being able to be played like a mini Beethoven invention, then it wasn’t worth repeating all that much.
That may have done him good when he first started with ‘Piano Man’, but after one too many lacklustre albums he released in Los Angeles, Turnstiles was the first time he felt comfortable coming back home. New York was always where he was meant to be, and while ‘The Big Apple had fallen on hard times throughout the late 1970s, Joel was going to do everything he could to go back home and document what was going on.
The album isn’t necessarily his best work by any stretch, but when the minute that he hitched a ride on that Greyhound bus, he practically could see the entire skeleton of ‘New York State of Mind’ coming together. He may have had to add the finishing touches once he got to a piano, but even years after the fact, Joel almost can’t claim that he wrote the whole thing based on how seamless it was.
The music flowed through him without even thinking, and Joel felt that there was some sort of angelic force guiding him to write that song, saying, “I ran upstairs and wrote the song in 20 minutes to half an hour. The whole song came to me like that. I love it when that happens. It was basically what I was feeling. Sometimes these things just drop from heaven into your brain, and that’s usually the better songs.”
And despite being known as one of the kings of New York music, ‘New York State of Mind’ is one of the greatest songs that actually sounds like it comes from Manhattan. Any band can write about the rush that they feel going to Central Park for the first time and being bumper to bumper in traffic, but as soon as Joel hits that main piano figure, you’re practically there in Times Square looking at every single marquee and building that looks gigantic.
Joel didn’t set out to write the next anthem of his city, but in 100 years’ time, there’s a good chance that ‘New York State of Mind’ could edge out ‘New York New York’ as one of the greatest theme songs for the city. Because while Sinatra was singing about the ideal version of what the city was supposed to be, Joel painted a picture that reflected what it has always been like.
