The one song Billy Joel is most proud of writing: “It’s very simple”
During his recording career, Billy Joel was a one-man hit machine who only needed his piano to concoct a song for the ages. Considering his ability to write chart-dominating hits, it is very difficult to understand why he has sometimes been maligned as a distinctly uncool member of the songwriting set.
Part of that reasoning is simply because of his popular status; he has been reduced to a standard chart-topper, with songs like ‘Uptown Girl’ being a particular nail in his cool coffin. Joel has produced songs which have sold millions of copies and are ingrained in the minds of music lovers across the globe, but the track he’s most proud of writing is a cult classic rather than a best-seller.
The most famous song in his collection is ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, which has taken on a life of its own and now belongs to his fans instead of Joel. Similarly to many major artists responsible for huge hits, the singer-songwriter holds negative feelings towards the track. If it was up to him, his most notable creation would be one less familiar to the masses.
“I think it’s probably the worst musical thing I’ve ever written,” Joel claimed of ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ during an interview with legendary broadcaster Howard Stern on his Sirius XM show in 2010. “I don’t think it’s much of a melody.”
‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ has sold over three million copies in the United States alone, which is a stark contrast to ‘And So It Goes’, the track which Joel described as his proudest songwriting moment. The latter, released in 1989, appeared on his album Storm Front, and despite being released as a single, only reached 37 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The track was penned about his relationship with supermodel Elle MacPherson and his fear that it would inevitably end in heartbreak. “So I would choose to be with you, That’s if the choice were mine to make, But you can make decisions too, And you can have this heart to break,” he painfully sings on ‘And So It Goes’.
While, unlike in the song, Joel was culpable for the end of the relationship as he moved on with future-wife Christine Brinkley, with MacPherson later claiming she was “ousted”, his love for ‘And So It Goes’ remains.
During the aforementioned interview with Stern, Joel labelled ‘And So It Goes’ as the most under-appreciated song in his catalogue. Furthermore, the New Yorker listed the Storm Front track as one of his top five tracks during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2017.
Meanwhile, during an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in 2022, Joel explained why ‘And So It Goes’ is the song he’s most proud of making. He remarked: “I think, a song like ‘And So It Goes’. It’s a song I’m very proud of, it’s very short, it’s very simple, there’s not a lot of accompaniment. The chords are really evocative,” he commented before demonstrating how to play the track on the piano.
Joel continued: “You hear the dissonance? There’s always a little bit of a sour note in every chord. There’s an unresolved, there’s a tension through the whole thing. When I finished writing it, I said, ‘That’s really good. That’s a really good song.’ Because I’ve written some songs that aren’t that good.”
The track was originally inspired by an English folk song, ‘Barbara Allan’, “It’s very difficult to find the time signature in that song, it’s all up to the singer,” he explained. It shows just how perfectly Joel can adapt his musical sense to combine with his personal lyrics to create truly impressive songs, even if his favourite tunes don’t quite top the charts.
Listen to ‘And So It Goes’ below.
