What is the true story behind Billy Joel’s song ‘Uptown Girl’?
In ‘Uptown Girl’, arguably one of the worst songs of all time, Billy Joel relates a story of a working-class ‘downtown man’ and his attempts to win the affection of an affluent ‘uptown girl’.
The tune came out in 1983 on Joel’s ninth studio album, An Innocent Man, and reflects a different time in the singer’s life and cultural status.
In quite a repulsive telling of the story of ‘Uptown Girl’ between Joel and Howard Stern, Stern reveals that “some guy wrote a book and said that in fact, ‘Uptown Girl’ wasn’t about Christie Brinkley, it’s really about Elle MacPherson. I don’t know that Joel told him this”. Billy Joel had been dating the model around the time the song was released and some connected the dots. In response, Joel said: “They didn’t get the whole story; they got part of it.”
Detailing further, the musician added: “What they were trying to do was debunk that it was all about Christie. I wasn’t even dating Christie when I started writing the song; I was dating Elle. It was an amazing time. That’s why I started writing a song called ‘Uptown Girls’. It was plural. I couldn’t believe the situation I was in; it was unbelievable.”
Stern asked whether or not Joel could believe the fact that in one chance encounter, he had sat in front of Christie Brinkley, Elle MacPherson and Whitney Houston on the same night. He said that the three had all been crazy for Joel playing the piano. In truth, Stern comes across as a bit of a creep and grossly refers to MacPherson as “the body”, saying “her body is perfection”.
Trying to offer more context, Joel attempted to explain how he had written terrible lyrics like, “Uptown girls, I’ve been all around the world.” He added, “So I’m dating Elle for a couple of months, on and off. She went to Europe, and I figured that was it.”
He continued: “Then I started to date Christie, after Elle and I had stopped dating. Rather than the song being about all these different girls, she became the uptown girl. I started writing it about one person. They got the story wrong. It is about Christie.”
During his conversation with Howard Stern, the interviewer then mentions that he thought that it would have upset Brinkley that her identity was largely comprised of her being the uptown girl. Joel continues: “I started writing it when I was dating Elle, and that was it. It wasn’t about Elle, particularly because it was originally called ‘Uptown Girls’. And it was a tribute to Frankie Valley.”
Is it his best song?
In short: no. The track ranks low on the list of Billy Joel’s best songs. The tune might have cultural cut-through, finding its way out of Joel’s repertoire and into the pop mainstream, but it doesn’t land with the same emotional weight as the rest of his catalogue.
For the most part, the song probably ends up quite low on Joel’s own list of his favourite tracks. For him, songs have never been throwaways, but this one might fall into that category, or at least a rubbish bin of songs he’d rather forget.
