How Christine Brinkley transformed Billy Joel’s songwriting
In the music video for Billy Joel’s 1983 hit ‘Uptown Girl,’ he and his backup singers are working as auto mechanics with a high-society girl, played by supermodel Christine Brinkley, pulling into their shop in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, which eventually sees the ‘downtown guy’ ride off with Brinkley on the back of his motorcycle.
Inspired by the doo-wop of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, the sing-song melodies are performed with a dance sequence fitting for a musical, of which Brinkley had to coach the musician through its basic steps.
‘Uptown Girl’ was inspired by Joel’s chance meeting with the model, Whitney Houston and Elle Macpherson, who were on a modelling assignment in the Caribbean and approached the singer, who happened to be playing the piano in the hotel bar. Later, Joel and Brinkley’s reintroduction on the video shoot prompted their relationship, with the two marrying in 1985, becoming one of the decade’s defining rockstar-supermodel couples, subject to insatiable tabloid coverage.
Cruelly, a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ narrative followed them and the underlying trepidation hidden in the ‘Uptown Girl’ yearning somehow manifested in reality. Brinkley received the brunt of the criticism, with rumours about her supposed infidelity and plastic surgery continually following her and her husband, Joel, who, in defence of his wife, used his talents to respond to the incessant coverage.
His resulting song, ‘That’s Not Her Style’, opens his 11th studio album, 1988’s Storm Front. Coinciding with the turbulent press coverage of his marriage, the writing and production of Storm Front manifested from major shifts in Joel’s business affairs, and the album became one of persistence in the eye of a storm.
Speaking about ‘That’s Not Her Style’ with Rolling Stone, Joel commented on the shift in his songwriting, saying, “I’ve learned to kind of laugh at a lot of tabloid stuff. But I have my forum, too, to reintroduce myself, to say, ‘Hello, this is what you’ve read. Let me just tell you what’s really going on’.” On the song, he wields every rumour thrown at Brinkley, a woman who allegedly “makes the paparazzi run till dawn” as she travels around the world, living a lavish lifestyle, asserting, ”It’s not her style, I can tell you/ Because I’m her man”.
Joel was later asked if the track would work against the couple, only increasing their media attention. “That’s a dilemma for me, because no one knew the other woman I was married to,” he responded, “so I could write ‘Just The Way You Are’, and other songs, and people could identify with it. With Christie, if I write a love song about a woman or if I write anything about a woman, people assume I’m writing about her.” Humourously, he also claimed, “And I know if it were me listening, I’d be going, ‘God, there’s that jerk singing about his beautiful supermodel wife again. I’m so sick of reading about the two of them. Screw him!’”
The musician reflects that the roles of artist and muse, even in his marriage, inherently influence how his songwriting and music will be received, although he likens his approach to that of other men whose personal lives bleed into their work. “But I also know that a lot of great artists, Picasso, Chopin, others, used the women they love as their muse, to represent women in general. So I’m in good company.”
While Joel and Brinkley would later divorce in 1994, ‘That’s Not Her Style’ immortalises a speculative period in their relationship from Joel’s point of view, offering one of the many instances where Brinkley assumes the role of the singer’s muse, altering his storytelling forever.
