“Do what’s good for you”: Why Billy Joel considered one of his classics “preachy”
The last thing that an artist wants to do is talk down to their audience. The hardest part of any lyricist is to write the songs that people want to hear, but as soon as the lights go down and people start listening to their favourite songs, it’s hard to toe the line between relating to the audience naturally and starting to become insufferable after one too many verses. And while Billy Joel was known as one of the most down-to-earth people in the music industry, he wasn’t safe from a few times when he went over the line while writing a song.
It’s not like writing tunes is Joel’s favourite thing in the world, either. He had equated the practise to pulling teeth more than a few times, but while he did have to put a little more time and thought into his words than every other rock star, it was always worth it when listening to him make something as beautiful as ‘And So It Goes’ or as cinematic as the back half of ‘Scenes From An Italian Restaurant’.
And while it took people a lot longer to catch on to everything once The Stranger took off, it’s not like Joel instantly changed with his breakthrough album. Going through everything from Piano Man to Turnstiles, he was always looking to make something different, and it’s no shocker that by the time people started paying attention, many of them were playing catch-up to see what a brilliant tune ‘New York State of Mind’ was.
That’s not to say there weren’t a handful of times when Joel could get up on his soapbox. He would always stand up for what he believed in, and by the time that he had seen a bit of success off of ‘Piano Man’, songs like ‘The Entertainer’ were the first time that he decided to make something a bit more angry, talking about how the industry likes to use up artists and spit them out before they even realise what hit them.
So in comparison to that spiteful bit of rage, ‘James’ is a lot more tame. This is the equivalent of Joel catching up with an old friend and watching them waste their life away for half of their lives. The whole point was to remind everyone about getting the most out of their lives, but according to Joel, he may have overstepped things a little bit on the tune.
Compared to everything else he had done, the ‘Piano Man’ felt this was one of the first times he managed to sound a bit too world-wise for his own good, saying, “It’s a little preachy – ‘Do what’s good for you or you’re not good for anybody.’ I was seeing my friends going off to do jobs and going to school and following a path that was not theirs. They were trying to fit into the machine, and I knew that that wasn’t for them. But that’s what people expected them to do. So that’s what that song was about – do what’s good for you.”
But let’s take a minute and look at this tune next to other preachy songwriters like Bob Dylan. Dylan would have most likely given this person the business in a more cavalier way and showed them what he figured the answers might be, but Joel never wanted to do that. He knew his audience was just as smart as he was, but they sometimes needed the right person to give them the right advice.
And if some people do find a song like ‘James’ to be preachy, it might be because it rings a little too close to home. Everyone is going to come across people who have felt that they have wasted their lives away working a regular nine-to-five, but if they manage to see what life has to offer, they’ll find it’s much more rewarding to follow their dreams.
