The album that made Billy Joel quit writing: “What’s the point”
To the surprise of many, I’m sure, sometimes Billy Joel just doesn’t “give a fuck” about lyrics. When writing a song, he would always start with the music and words would follow. “I can’t figure out half the lyrics to [Rolling] Stones songs and it doesn’t matter…I like the music,” he said in a 2018 interview with Vulture. “Or Yes: What the fuck are they talking about?”
Yet even with this carefree attitude, many would agree that he has given life to some striking stories and characters. ‘Piano Man’ paints as clear a picture as any – something that would widely be considered a result of well-penned lyrics. ‘New York State of Mind’ boasts a humble sentiment in needing nothing more than the mindset synonymous with Joel’s hometown, which many would find heartwarming, whilst ‘She’s Always a Woman’ carries a satirical air as the piano man sings, “Then she’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleeding / But she’ll bring out the best and the worst you can be.”
Having said this, if we take a moment to humour Joel’s comments on lyric writing, there’s something interesting to be found. Throughout the years, Joel has become known for his willingness to hold Q&A sessions with fans in settings across the globe. In 1995, at the end of a two-year-long tour, he paid a visit to Nuremberg, Germany – the town where his father grew up and, as he explained in a Q&A held there, “I’m here because he asked me to come.”
During the session, he spoke of the backdrop to his musical development. Before he was ever in a band, before he even knew he would become a musician, classical music served as the foundation to what would become his bread and butter. It’s no wonder, then, that he opened this appearance with a performance of ‘Souvenir’, the opening of which finds its footing in a Chopin prelude. “My father played the piano when I was a little boy, and the first thing that I remember hearing was classical music when I was young. My father and my mother would play classical music on the radio and classical records and I was enchanted by this; I thought it was a kind of magic. When I was very, very little, I would make up my own songs – not songs with words but music.”
Two years prior, Joel released what would become his last-ever mainstream album, River of Dreams. Whilst the ten-track collection topped the Billboard 200 and gave him a Top five single in the title track, the indifference shown to the album’s other singles – ‘All About Soul’ peaked at no. 29, with ‘No Man’s Land’ not charting at all – convinced him it was time to step aside. “I put a lot of work into River of Dreams and it was as if the business had left me behind because there are substantial songs on that album that never went anywhere,” he reflected.
The star continued: “So I said, ‘What’s the point of putting myself through writing and recording if it doesn’t mean what it’s supposed to mean out there in the world?’” When asked separately about what he believed to be his best lyric, he even cited ‘No Man’s Land’ and specifically the line: “Raise up a multiplex and we will make a sacrifice.” It’s understandable then how disheartened one could be when the work they believe to be their best falls flatter than the rest in the public eye.
What followed, however, was 2001’s Fantasies & Delusions – an album of classical compositions all written by Joel. So, whiet disappointment may have fallen on the singer-songwriter following his 1993 release, there seems to have been an element of serendipity at play when he returned to his roots for his actual final outing.
He further reflected on his retirement from writing, commenting, “Certain composers only have so much productivity in them. Mozart wrote more than 40 symphonies; Beethoven wrote nine. That difference doesn’t mean one guy was better than the other. And I always looked at the Beatles as a template. They did 12 studio albums. By the time I got to my 12th album, I didn’t think the quality trajectory was going to continue to go up. And I was more interested in other music.”
