Chords for Why Billy Joel writes songs differently from everyone else

When you think of Billy Joel, perhaps you think of songs like Uptown Girl or Piano Man and Just the Way You Are.
He wrote so many amazing hits.
But if you ask a Billy Joel fan what's their favourite song, they'll almost certainly say a song that wasn't a hit.
_ Even Billy Joel himself has said his best songs were the album tracks.
I tend to like the album tracks, not the ones that are the hit singles.
So what is it about the way [C] Billy Joel writes music that makes this true?
And why is it so unique to him? _ _
_ _ [F] _ _ [C] _ _ Whenever you hear songwriters [G] talk about their process, it's so common to hear that songs come so easily, [C] as if they just fall out of the sky.
Paul McCartney has even said that songs like Let It [Cm] Be and Yesterday came to [C] him in a dream.
Because [Bb] it was a dream and I just woke up and I had the melody in my head.
And then there are songs like God Only Knows, which was written really quickly.
This generally wasn't the case for Billy Joel.
Songwriting for him was hard work.
He's described it as being like pulling teeth.
And because it was so hard, he'd procrastinate so much.
He'd have to really make it an event to sit down [C] and write music.
I tend to put off the writing part as long as I can.
For many artists this is intuitive and easy.
But for Billy Joel it required discipline, focus and a lot of time.
It reminds me of when somebody asked [G] Ernest Hemingway, [Am] why are your books [C] so easy to read?
And he said, because they were so hard to write.
Now you might think this would lead him to overcomplicate his music.
Sometimes when you try too hard it just makes things worse.
But Billy Joel always found a way to keep [C] things simple.
Melodies you can't forget and lyrics that tell [E] a story so clear it paints a picture in your mind.
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_ _ _ [G] _ _ [C] I think this blend of [F] discipline and simplicity comes [A] from his influences when he was younger.
[Am] He was a classically [C] trained pianist, he took [F] lessons and he played very well.
And this love of classical music stayed with him throughout his life.
He actually [Em] used the melody [Bb] from one of [C] Beethoven's piano sonatas in his song This [Ab] Night.
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_ And towards the [C] end of his career [D] he actually released an album of [C] his own classical compositions.
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_ [G] _ _ _ [Bm] But when you [Em] listen to his music, [Bm] this classical [C] background at first [A] isn't so apparent.
His music is so deeply rooted in rock and roll [Ebm] and blues and jazz.
And [G] he'd explore all these styles quite [A] intensely on different albums.
Glass Houses for example is very much a rock inspired album.
[Ebm] Whereas [E] 52nd Street [Bm] is much more rooted in jazz.
But [Ebm] when you strip all this away you find that so many of his [D] songs work well as classical pieces.
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_ _ _ [G] _ _ [C] _ It doesn't matter what you add on [N] during the production.
The basics of melody, harmony [F] and rhythm are still there in all of his music.
So this is all very well at explaining how Billy Joel writes music.
But it doesn't explain why his best songs are the more obscure ones, the album tracks. _ _ _ _ _ _
[Bb] _ _ _ _ _ _ [D] This is where I think we really start to see a difference between Billy Joel and other songwriters.
We all know this idea where an artist will have a hit song or two
and then the rest of the tracks on the album are just filler.
Almost as if they're just an afterthought.
This is probably because the record label said they needed these other songs just to fill out the album.
But this wasn't the case for Billy Joel.
If you look at any of his records, they're filled with great songs.
They may not all be suitable as [Gm] hits but that wasn't what he was [Bb] going for.
This is clearest to see in his early records.
His first four albums, they contain great songs like She's Got A Way, New York State of Mind, Summer Highland Falls.
Don't get me wrong, these are all amazing songs but they're not [G] hits, the kind of thing that you'd hear on hit [F] radio stations.
So [D] unlike other artists that did [Bb] find a hit or two,
Billy [G] Joel was writing all this great music [Am] and actually [Dm] struggling to break through with a [Bb] big hit.
His fourth [Eb] album, Turnstiles, peaked at _ 122 on the Billboard [Ab] album charts.
_ By this stage, if [Eb] his next record didn't do well, he was in danger of being dropped by his [Ab] record label.
In [Db] 1977, he released [C] his fifth album, The Stranger.
[E] In my opinion, I think this is his greatest album.
It contains some of his best songs like Vienna and Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.
So how do we think this [C] album performed? _
[E] _ 181.
It's hard to believe we're talking about Billy Joel right now.
And this isn't bad music, it's great music.
He's [Em] proven he can write great songs [C] and they're getting better with each album.
So why was it so [Dm] hard for him to find this big hit song?
And what actually changed to make this happen? _ _
_ [Gm] _ _ _ _ _ [C] The first single off The [E] Stranger was Moving Out, a great song.
But the radio stations actually preferred Just The Way You Are.
This actually went on to do really well and it ultimately won song and record of the year at [C] the Grammys.
The next song, [F] Only the Good Die Young, also performed poorly [Db] when put out as a single.
[G] It was only when some religious groups called for it to be banned on the radio that this controversy actually generated some traction.
What made a Billy Joel record unique was that he never had this clearly defined list of hit singles and album tracks.
Instead, every [D] song was made through this same discipline [F] process.
[Bb] You may think this is much better and it makes for much better music.
[G] But it just makes it so much [A] harder to find this traction to get a big [Dm] hit.
And it's only after so much time has passed [G] that the trend of what was popular at the time is forgotten and we can see all this music for [Dm] what it really is.
After The Stranger, he [C] continued making great records and the hits did slowly start coming. _ _
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_ _ [F] _ _ _ _ [C] It's Still Rock and Roll to Me from Glass Houses became his first number one single.
And he achieved the same feat with We Didn't Start the Fire and Tell Her About It.
But that was it, just three number one singles from one of America's greatest songwriters.
And this was just in the US.
[Bb] In the UK, he [A] had just one number one, which [G] was Uptown Girl.
[C] But of course now, when you go and see him live, I don't think he really performs Uptown Girl that much.
He often lets the audience decide and they want to hear songs like [Eb] Vienna and Summer Highland Falls.
[Gb] I'll throw out two titles and you tell me which one you want us [Ab] to do.
It's a song [G] called Vienna.
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_ _ _ [Eb] His last album of popular music came out in 1993, which was actually before I [F] was born.
This again is quite [Gm] unusual.
Many old artists will keep putting out [D] records.
Some [Gm] of them are good, but of course it's never really as good as their older stuff.
[Am] So what can we learn from [Ab] this?
Well, I mentioned earlier that for many songwriters, songs just fall [Bb] out of the sky and they come [C] so easy and intuitively.
_ This certainly does [Gbm] work.
It's been proven [Eb] again and again.
[F] But what happens when it doesn't work?
What happens when these [A] songs just aren't that good?
The result is maybe getting lucky with [Eb] a hit song or two, but never [G] really having this [D] strong [Gm] catalogue of music.
[E] But Billy Joel had a different process.
He was disciplined and focused.
And as a result, you can take any Billy Joel [Bb] song and it's hard to imagine it being any better.
You know, [Gm] Vienna might not be your favourite song, but I can't imagine any [F] way it could be improved.
And this is because [Ab] Billy Joel put so much [Eb] craft into his songwriting.
This is what he did best.
He [Bb] took an idea, he took a song, and he turned it into [C] the best thing it could possibly [D] be.
Because of this, he's [Gm] got a catalogue of music that really shows him as one of the greatest songwriters [F] of the 20th century.
[Eb] And no filler or rubbish really made its way through [C] like it did with many other artists.
For these other artists, when you go and see them live, because they've only got [D] a hit or two,
you [F] spend the entire show just waiting for them to play [F] this song at the end.
[Bb] But if you look at Billy [F] Joel's setlist, every song is an absolute [Eb] classic and loved by everyone in [A] the audience.
_ [C] And it's these songs, more than the hits, that will really stand the test of time.
When will [Gb] you realise _ [F] _