The 1978 lyric that Billy Joel couldn’t stand singing
Billy Joel wasn’t the kind of artist that liked the idea of carrying on writing forever.
There always comes a time when someone is going to want to put the pen down for the last time, and while Joel was happy to keep writing music, it was always the lyrics that turned any of his pop songs into exercises every time he made a new record. And even though his lyrics were absolutely beautiful in many respects, there were a few times when he felt that he wasn’t being as sincere as he hoped he would be.
When you look through a lot of his lyrics, Joel was documenting where he was in his life at any given time. He wasn’t exactly Bob Dylan or anything, but he could only write about the problems that he was dealing with. ‘You May Be Right’ was about him being a bit more erratic behind the scenes, ‘Christie Lee’ was about his new affair with Christie Brinkley at the time, and even ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ at least had a good premise of documenting everything that he had seen over his entire lifetime.
But when you have some of the greatest melodies of all time, not having the right line can end up tainting whatever it is you’re working on. Joel was more than equipped to make the best kind of rock and roll that he could, but when he hit upon ‘Honesty’, there was no way in hell that he was going with the original draft. Because when Liberty DeVito offered up his take on the song, it was a bit more suggestive than it ultimately ended up.
All songwriters are usually looking for placeholder words, but Joel was never going to work with a song with the working title of ‘Sodomy’. He needed something with a little more depth, but even when he began hashing out the words, he didn’t exactly think of a song about someone chastising their lover for constantly being dishonest with them every single time they talked together.
As far as Joel was concerned, whoever was singing this kind of song was going to look like some pompous asshole, and he felt that it didn’t fit with the songwriter that he always wanted to be, saying, “It sang well, and I felt like a hypocrite, because who am I to say that I need honesty? I’m a bullshit artist from the get go. Like what am I a saint?” But sometimes it’s more about putting on a character than making the kind of song that was from the heart every time someone sang.
Joel wasn’t going to be making characters in the same way that David Bowie did or anything, but considering how well Bruce Springsteen worked on his characters until they were absolutely perfect, he was going to do the same thing every single time he had the right idea, whether it was telling the story of Brenda and Eddie or playing a more exaggerated version of himself when talking about the messed-up idiot that stayed up all night in the song ‘Big Shot’.
At the same time, it’s not hard to see why Joel was a little bit upset with the final lyric. He wanted the chance to make a fantastic song, but even in an age when some Bob Dylan songs could feel like lectures after a while, Joel was making tunes that actively sounded like they were trying to tell you how to live your life.
That’s not where he was coming from, and while ‘Honesty’ did become a decent-sized hit, there was no way that he was going to be playing up that side of himself for the rest of his life. He was still the same kid from Leavittown who made his fair share of mistakes, so when he’s singing that tune nowadays, it’s more about trying to remind himself to stay honest throughout every part of his life.
