“The most bullshit” song Billy Joel ever wrote, according to Billy Joel
He might be routinely maligned as a bit of a musical oddity, but Billy Joel has earned his living as a rock star of the people.
Although it’s easy to cast off the ‘Piano Man’ as one of the most mellow singer-songwriters of the 1970s, his reputation as another blue-collar guy who happens to be a rock star has made him endearing to every paying customer who comes to see his show. While most Joel fans have their favourites, even he knows when he has a few missteps in his career.
Granted, there was no way that anything would stand in Joel’s way after the release of The Stranger. After years of slogging it out with one tepid album after the next following the success of ‘Piano Man’, nearly every song on Joel’s fifth outing became an enduring classic, from the beautiful love song ‘Just the Way You Are’ to the episodic journey going on in the middle of ‘Scenes From an Italian Restaurant’.
Instead of overthinking things, though, Joel approached 52nd Street as just the next album, making another batch of songs that could go toe-to-toe with his previous work like ‘Big Shot’ and the jazzy jaunt ‘Zanzibar’. Since he made his living behind a piano, it was only a matter of time before Joel broke out the ballads on the album.
In a strange successor to his previous effort, ‘Honesty’ slides in where ‘Just the Way You Are’ was on the last album. Using the placeholder word ‘sodomy’ from his drummer, Joel knew he needed to work fast to find a replacement. Crafting a gorgeous melody around the lyrics, Joel paints a picture of how people have lost touch with honesty in modern society, preferring to hide behind their insecurities.
Even though Joel may have been dipping his toes into political commentary on this track, he also quickly pointed out that he had no right to write in that style. When reflecting on the lyrics, Joel recalled to Sirius XM, “’Honesty’ is the most bullshit song I ever wrote. I mean, who am I to preach to people, ‘You gotta be honest with me.’ I haven’t always been honest in my life.”
It’s an interesting issue that most songwriters must face. At what point does music, or songs, in particular, become an overextension of your personality? All artists are encouraged to express themselves through their work, but when does it become an expression of the person you wish you were, rather than something that feels, well, honest?
It was an issue that has faced some of the greats, including, most notably, John Lennon and Bob Dylan. While the latter was chastised by the former for his track ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’, Lennon was belittled by Paul Simon for ‘Imagine’, with both songs being called out as sanctimonious.
Considering where it’s placed on the album, though, ‘Honesty’ strikes a gripping tone right out of the gate. Since the opening track, ‘Big Shot’, dealt with the pitfalls that come with staying out too late and making a fool of one’s self, having a sobering ballad like this feels like the calm after the storm, as the same character from ‘Big Shot’ finally has to come to grips with what has happened.
Despite the lyrical hangups and holier-than-thou attitude that Joel claims to have had, the execution of the song works just as well on its own. Since the rest of the band had been woodshedding throughout the process, it’s easy to focus on the instrumental flourishes in the track, like the rising tension in the chorus.
Granted, Joel would end up faring much better on his next handful of albums. Earning more hits off of songs like ‘It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me’ and ‘All For Leyna’, Joel would soon start incorporating his feelings into his songs, with An Innocent Man being based around the music he loved as a kid. While it’s easy to see most Billy Joel songs as character pieces, he didn’t think he was cut out for the Bob Dylan-style preachiness of ‘Honesty’.
