The song Billy Joel wrote as a joke on himself which broke his number one duck
As successful and praiseworthy as large amounts of Billy Joel’s career were, it might come as a surprise to learn that his output wasn’t celebrated quite as much in the UK as it was in his homeland of the US.
A typical New York artist who embodied the city he was born and raised in, perhaps it was a case of his material being so entrenched in American culture that he never managed to make the same impression on British audiences, but despite not having as much success on the other side of the Atlantic, it’s still hard to look at an artist of his calibre and consider him to have been a failed export.
While songs such as ‘Piano Man’ have retroactively gained popularity in the UK, and despite mega hits such as ‘Just The Way You Are’, ‘My Life’ and ‘It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me’ not landing in the charts as they did back home, Joel is definitely looked up to as an artist overseas, but when the UK was obsessing over similarly-minded homegrown artists like Elton John, they weren’t leaving enough room to welcome Joel into their lives to the same degree.
However, while Joel had failed to reach the dizzying heights of number one in the UK charts for well over a decade, things eventually changed in 1983, when he managed to find his way to the elusive top spot with a song that is likely to define his career as far as British audiences are concerned.
The thing is, the song in question was one that Joel had created as a self-deprecating joke that ridiculed not just his sound, but the fabric of his entire being and the life he was living at the time of the song’s release. ‘Uptown Girl’ may not have been a number one hit in the US, but UK audiences were ready to lap it up, much to Joel’s confusion.
Seemingly inspired by ‘60s girl-groups, the production of both Phil Spector and Motown’s impressive roster of the era, ‘Uptown Girl’ is significantly different from how pop music was beginning to sound in the early ‘80s, with a distinctly retro feel to it rather than utilising the high-tech approaches that were beginning to gain popularity at the time. While its anachronistic taste was one unusual facet of the song’s success, the lyrical content is perhaps the stranger aspect.
At this time, Joel had found himself in a few short-lived romantic relationships with high-profile celebrities and models, with him having been involved with Elle Macpherson for a while prior to the song’s release, and later going on to wed Christie Brinkley. Having such stylish partners amused Joel, a short man who didn’t consider himself blessed with good looks, and as a consequence, he wrote this song in a facetious manner, joking about how unbelievable it was for him to find himself in such a situation.
During a 1995 Q&A at the University of Rochester, he elaborated on his inspiration for the track, laughing at the strange circumstances of how it came about. “I was going out with these ‘uptown girls,’” he claimed, noting the plurality of how the song was originally penned. “But I was laughing at myself because I would go home and wake up the next morning, looking in the mirror and go ‘haha, this is great!’”
It may have all been a surprising blur to Joel, but after 12 years of trying to crack the top of the UK charts, he’d finally done it with ‘Uptown Girl’, a song that gleefully laughs at his own expense, and even more remarkably, it was a feat he never repeated again.
