The 1964 lyric that inspired Billy Joel’s breakthrough hit: “Exactly the right note”
There’s a domino effect in the music industry that’s easy to forget when we look at some of its biggest legends, one that proves that even those we consider completely untouchable, like Billy Joel or Paul Simon, were once inspired by other heroes before they became heroes themselves.
After all, one of Simon’s best-ever compositions, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, was once inspired by the Swan Silvertones’ ‘Mary Don’t You Weep’, in which Claude Jeter sings the line, “I’ll be your bridge over deep water if you trust in my name”, while Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ was also loosely inspired by songs like Bob Seger’s ‘Night Moves’ and ‘Against the Wind’, and the riff to Radiohead’s ‘Karma Police’ was inspired by The Beatles’ ‘Sexy Sadie’.
The list goes on. In fact, if you were to think of practically any legend or legendary song, the chances are it was inspired in some way or another by another legendary song, or at least a specific style, riff, or chord progression the artist discovered from someone else. Or, in some circumstances, entire moods or experiences from other forms they wish to recreate in their own musical communities.
And when it comes to the ultimate hero of music, the one person who’s genuinely a fan of music in a way that runs bone-deep and seeps through his pores as if it were the very thing he was born to do, no one fits the bill more than Billy Joel. Joel is one of the biggest stars in American music history, and when you look at how much he pours all his love for music into his own work, it makes complete sense as to why he reached the top in the first place.
And it’s because of this deep connection to music that he’s managed to pull off virtually everything he’s ever set his mind to. Sure, when we think of Joel, we think of his obvious hits (especially if you’re not an American and have only really appreciated his impact from afar), like ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’, ‘Vienna’, Piano Man’, Uptown Girl’, and so on. But when you take a second to dive deeper and really look at all he’s accomplished against all odds, his legacy is pretty remarkable, more so than most.
After all, Joel isn’t just one of the most successful rock artists in the world; he’s also sort of a musical prodigy, having cut his chops across pop, jazz, R&B, doo-wop and even classical music. On the subject of classical, Joel always shows his true colours, discussing major players like Mozart and Beethoven and how, especially with the latter, you could sense his struggles in the music almost as if the compositions themselves were composed yesterday.
There’s a reason why he once compared the German composer to God, and it’s because, to him, his concertos and sonatas “were always perfect”, hitting “exactly the right note” in a way that was somehow still “very human”. In turn, much of Joel’s work centred around the same principle of feeling and developing emotional connections to art as if the stories were written solely for us, no matter the genre, time period or context from which they emerge.
This was the case with another of Joel’s best tracks, ‘Just The Way You Are’, his breakthrough hit, written for Joel’s first wife, Elizabeth Weber, and inspired directly by The Four Seasons’ 1964 hit, ‘Rag Doll’. Specifically, he took inspiration from the last line: “Rag doll / I love you just the way you are”.
Going back to how most heroes take ideas from other heroes, ‘Just The Way You Are’ is a prime example of how legends like Joel can take genius and make their own slice of genius, repackaging specific lyrics, melodies or styles in a way that appeals to an entirely new generation. It might mean that there’s no such thing as originality, but why does it matter when the result is something far more powerful than that: emotional connection.
