Ep. 90: Billy Joel – Top 6 Songs
Intro
Hello and Welcome to this episode of the podcast, "The Mnemonic Tree", where we add a single mnemonic leaf to our Tree of Knowledge.
Today's episode is on a true legend of the music industry that has not only withstood the test of time but has thrived with continual change and adaption throughout his career to provide a body of music loved by countless generations.
His song “Piano Man” is based on his real-life experience as a lounge musician in Los Angeles between 1972 and 1973, where he moved to escape an unfair record contract back in New York. The characters were real along with the mood, feeling, and sense of camaraderie he created, with what is probably my favourite Billy Joel song “Goodnight Saigon”. You feel every lyric and emotion of the futility and waste of war, something that our generation has been lucky enough to avoid and should be eternally indebted and grateful to those that have and do defend our way of life.
Today’s mnemonic is on Billy Joel’s top 6 songs. So, with no further ado, we will begin with a summary from Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Summary
William Martin Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American singer, pianist, and songwriter. Commonly nicknamed the "Piano Man" after his signature 1973 song of the same name,[5][6] he has had a successful music career as a solo artist throughout the 1970s and '80s. From 1971 to 1993, he released twelve studio albums that spanned pop and rock, as well as one album of classical music compositions in 2001. He is one of the best-selling music artists,[7] as well as the seventh-best-selling recording artist and the fourth-best-selling solo artist in the United States,[8] with over 160 million records sold worldwide. His 1985 compilation album, Greatest Hits – Volume I & Volume II, is one of the best-selling albums in the United States.[9]
Born in New York City, in the Bronx, Joel grew up on Long Island. Growing up, he took piano lessons at his mother's insistence. After dropping out of high school to pursue a music career, Joel took part in two short-lived bands, The Hassles and Attila, before signing a record deal with Family Productions and starting off a solo career in 1971 with his first release Cold Spring Harbor. In 1972, Joel caught the attention of Columbia Records after a live radio performance of the song "Captain Jack" became popular in Philadelphia, prompting him to sign a new record deal with the company and release his second album, Piano Man, in 1973. After Streetlife Serenade and Turnstiles in 1974 and 1976 respectively, Joel released his critical and commercial breakthrough album, The Stranger, in 1977. This album became Columbia's bestselling release, selling over 10 million copies and spawning several hit singles, including "Just the Way You Are", "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)", "Only the Good Die Young", and "She's Always a Woman"; the album also contains the popular album tracks "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant", Joel's favorite of his own songs which has become a firm staple of his live shows,[10] and "Vienna", also one of Joel's personal favorites[11][12] and nowadays one of his most streamed songs on the internet.[13]
Joel's next album, 52nd Street, was released in 1978 and it soon became his first album to peak at No.1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Joel released his seventh studio album, Glass Houses, in 1980 in an attempt to further establish himself as a rock artist; this release featured "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" (Joel's first single to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart), "You May Be Right", "Don't Ask Me Why", and "Sometimes a Fantasy". His next album, The Nylon Curtain, was released in 1982, and stemmed from a desire to create more lyrically and melodically ambitious music. An Innocent Man, released in 1983, served as a homage to genres of music which Joel had grown up with in the 1950s, such as rhythm and blues and doo-wop; this release featured "Tell Her About It", "Uptown Girl" and "The Longest Time", three of his best-known songs. After The Bridge and Storm Front in 1986 and 1989 respectively, Joel released his twelfth studio album, River of Dreams, in 1993. He went on to release Fantasies and Delusions, a 2001 album featuring classical compositions composed by Joel and performed by British-Korean pianist Richard Hyung-ki Joo. Joel provided voiceover work in 1988 for the Disney animated film Oliver & Company, in which he played the character Dodger with his song, "Why Should I Worry?", and contributed to the soundtracks to several different films, including Easy Money, Ruthless People, and Honeymoon in Vegas.
Across the 20 years of his solo career, Joel produced 33 self-penned Top 40 hits in the U.S.,[14] three of which ("It's Still Rock and Roll to Me", "Tell Her About It", and "We Didn't Start the Fire") reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Joel has been nominated for 23 Grammy Awards, winning 6 of them, including Album of the Year for 52nd Street. Joel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1992), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1999),[15] and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame (2006). In 2001, Joel received the Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.[16] In 2013, Joel received the Kennedy Center Honors for influencing American culture through the arts. Since the advent of his solo career, Joel has had a successful touring career, holding live performances across the globe. In 1987, he became one of the first artists to hold a rock tour in the Soviet Union following the country's alleviation of the ban on rock music. Though Joel has not released a studio album since 2001's classical Fantasies & Delusions, he continues to occasionally tour or perform one-off concerts.
Extracted from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Joel]
Mnemonic
Billy Joel – Top 6 Songs Mnemonic – GO JUMP
(Picture Billy Joel going to jump on one of his 70-odd motorcycles in his collection and go for a ride)
1. Goodnight Saigon
2. Only the Good Die Young
3. Just the Way You Are
4. Uptown Girl
5. My Life
6. Piano Man
Five Fun Facts
1. Billy Joel grew up in Long Island, New York. His parents pushed him towards classical music and he started piano lessons at age four.
2. Billy Joel Holds the lifetime record of the most performances by any artist at Madison Square Garden in New York. It has actually just been announced recently that he will be ending his record-breaking residency after 150 shows. Amazingly, he had performed a show every month since 2014.
3. In July 1987 Billy Joel was the first American Entertainer to launch a full-scale rock production in the Soviet Union. He played three shows in the capital Moscow and three in Leningrad.
4. Billy Joels talents didn’t come out of fresh air with his father being a concert pianist in Austria. He escaped Austria after Jewish persecution by the Nazis and fled to Switzerland, and then to the US via Cuba.
5. Billy Joels talents weren’t limited to music. He was also an accomplished boxer which he took up after constant bullying as a kid. He competed on the Golden Gloves circuit and was on fire winning his first 22 fights.
Now just speaking of fire, apparently years ago Billy Joel's house burned down. Anyway, following a full origin and cause investigation, investigators say the fire was caused by a faulty Nintendo game console. However, when Billy Joel was questioned, he claimed that “Wii didn't start the fire!”
Three Question Quiz
Q.1. Which supermodel did Billy Joel marry?
Q.2. Which two bands did Billy Joel play with? Options are The Hassles & Attila or The Problems & Attila
Q.3. Billy Joel's first solo album Cold Spring Harbor was a massive critical and commercial failure. What was the main reason for this failure? Options are: Billy Joel’s voice hadn’t dropped or broke at that point or the album was mastered at the wrong speed
Bonus Q. Billy Joel toured extensively with another star with similar talents. The name of the tour was “Face to Face”. Who was the other star?
Mnemonic Recap
Billy Joel – Top 6 Songs Mnemonic – GO JUMP
(Picture Billy Joel going to jump on one of his 70-odd motorcycles in his collection and go for a ride)
1. Goodnight Saigon
2. Only the Good Die Young
3. Just the Way You Are
4. Uptown Girl
5. My Life
6. Piano Man
Three Question Quiz Answers
Q.1. Which supermodel did Billy Joel marry?
A. Kristie Brinkley
Q.2. Which two bands did Billy Joel play with? Options are The Hassles & Attila or The Problems & Attila
A. The Hassles & Attila
Q.3. Billy Joel's first solo album Cold Spring Harbor was a massive critical and commercial failure. What was the main reason for this failure? Options are: Billy Joel’s voice hadn’t dropped or broke at that point or the album was mastered at the wrong speed
A. The album was mastered at the wrong speed which ended up making him sound like a “chipmunk.”
Bonus Q. Billy Joel toured extensively with another star with similar talents. The name of the tour was “Face to Face”. Who was the other star?
A. Elton John and they did their first tour in 1994
Word of the Week
ferdutzt
[ fer-duhtst ]
adjective
confused; bewildered.
Example
On playing his first solo album, Billy Joel was ferdutzt and fuming as to the error in mastering and ran out into the middle of the street and smashed his copy of his record to bits.
Extracted from: [https://www.dictionary.com/]
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References
https://www.smoothradio.com/artists/billy-joel/best-songs/
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Beyonce
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/28/us/billy-joel-fast-facts/index.html