“I didn’t disagree”: The massive hit Billy Joel hated working on
Every band has those few songs that fade into the background of their career. Even though anyone can try their best to give their all to any song that they put on a record, there’s a good chance that the one that takes is the one that either took the least amount of effort or felt like pulling teeth trying to flesh out behind the scenes. Billy Joel always knew the importance of hard work when making one of his records, but he did realise when he was working with a song that was doomed from the start.
Before he had even started, though, Joel already had his fair share of experiences with flops. His work as a hard rock musician in his pre-fame band Attila is best left forgotten, and although Cold Spring Harbor is a great look at the artist that he would become, he would have gladly thrown his debut out onto the street than have to listen to his voice be sped up like it was on the final mix.
When looking at the way that Joel writes music, he was always interested in more than a catchy melody. This was someone who worshipped at the altar of people like Mozart and Beethoven, so if he was going to make a tune that made people want to listen again and again, it had to work on the same level as any classical piece of music.
That’s probably why he feels so much animosity towards ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’. The whole verse centres around only one note, and when playing the track live, there were even a few occasions where he stopped playing the tune altogether and moved on to something else. If there was one thing that Joel hated more than a lacklustre melody, it was the idea of cashing in on some music business schlock.
It’s not all that out of the ordinary for artists to take sponsorship deals or play the industry game by collaborating with other artists, but by the time Joel reached the 1980s, he at least saw the merit in being involved in ‘We Are the World’. The idea of raising money for charity would have done wonders for everyone’s public image if they featured on the tune, but outside of him hanging out with people like Bruce Springsteen at the session, Joel thought that the record itself was far from perfect.
“I remember most of us who were there didn’t like the song, but nobody would say so. I think Cyndi Lauper leaned over to me and said, ‘It sounds like a Pepsi commercial.’”
Billy Joel
Despite having the magic touch of being written by both Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, Joel felt that the track was a little too saccharine for him to like all that much, saying, “I remember most of us who were there didn’t like the song, but nobody would say so. I think Cyndi Lauper leaned over to me and said, ‘It sounds like a Pepsi commercial.’ And I didn’t disagree.”
It does sound like the kind of diabetes-inducing ballad that you’d hear in any other relief fund today, but what it lacks in depth, it makes up for in star power. There was no way that anyone was going to see this many celebrities on one track together, and while it’s strange to hear someone like Bob Dylan singing among juggernauts like Stevie Wonder and Daryl Hall, even his voice manages to add some history to the piece, given his various political tunes.
If anything, the song at least had its heart in the right place, and while it has become one of the more cringy things to come out of the decade, there’s no doubt that it tried to make the world a better place. After all, The Beatles had their own message they wanted to give the world two decades prior on ‘All You Need is Love’, so why wouldn’t someone want to capture that joy all over again?
