"Still Rock 'n' Roll to Me" is cute and catchy, pastiche but pastiche where you're never sure exactly who he's imitating; sort of Elvis Costello-ish, sort of Joe Jackson-ish. In the end, it's just a pop song and I like it for just being that. I suppose there's an undercurrent of older "rock" statesman sneering at the trends of the day, and therés a bit of nastiness to that, but I give no ...um, heck...about that. Billy JOel just wanted to make cool singles and send them to the top of the charts and he had the melodic sense to do it and just enough enough cleverness to keep it from being utter trash.
I remember reading that the sound of glass breaking at the very beginning of the album (just before "You May Be Right"), the picture on the front of the LP (picture of Joel about to throw a rock at a wall of glass), and the title "Glass Houses" itself -- were all metaphors for Joel breaking out of his pop music bubble. I also want to say, while the opportunity presents itself, that he gave very good concerts. And one thing a return concertgoer of his knew, is that he never had anything hanging behind his stage. That meant that sitting "behind the stage" was actually a pretty good seat!
tmoore gets closer. At the time, Billy Joel was very frustrated by his being pigeonholed as a "piano man" who did ballads. He found that limiting and wanted to show the world that he was more than that.
If you look up "middlebrow" in the dictionary I think Billy Joel's mug is pictured next to the entry. His stuff is always smarter than most of the pointless garbage that washes over the pop charts, but not smart enough to avoid ridicule from the critics and the hipsters. He got a lot of flack in the '70s for sounding like Paul McCartney, and indeed I think to some degree he's the American answer to Macca, substituting Macca's retro obsession with British music hall with Joel's own nods to Tin Pan Alley and - especially - jazz. While Joel might be the most perfectly middlebrow act rock ever produced, the lyrics to this one are fantastic and still ring true decades later: What's the matter with the clothes I'm wearing? Can't you tell that your tie's too wide? Maybe I should buy some old tab collars? Welcome back to the age of jive. Where have you been hidin' out lately, honey? You can't dress trashy till you spend a lot of money. Everybody's talkin' 'bout the new sound Funny, but it's still rock and roll to me What's the matter with the car I'm driving? Can't you tell that it's out of style? Should I get a set of whitewall tires? Are you gonna cruise the Miracle Mile? Nowadays you can't be too sentimental Your best bet's a true baby blue Continental. Hot funk, cool punk, even if it's old junk It's still rock and roll to me. Oh, it doesn't matter what they say in the papers 'Cause it's always been the same old scene. There's a new band in town But you can't get the sound from a story in a magazine... Aimed at your average teen How about a pair of pink sidewinders And a bright orange pair of pants? You could really be a Beau Brummel baby If you just give it half a chance. Don't waste your money on a new set of speakers, You get more mileage from a cheap pair of sneakers. Next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways It's still rock and roll to me (All right, Rico!) What's the matter with the crowd I'm seeing? Don't you know that they're out of touch? Should I try to be a straight 'A' student? If you are then you think too much. Don't you know about the new fashion honey? All you need are looks and a whole lotta money. It's the next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways It's still rock & roll to me. Everybody's talkin' 'bout the new sound Funny, but it's still rock and roll to me Predictably, Rolling Stone hated it. Good. It worked! It's very Joe Jackson, and his vocal sounds enough like Joe that I think it's who he's sending up. Although I'm not sure whether it's a sendup or an homage. Maybe it's both, or maybe it began life as a sendup before it became more of an homage. The video appears to be a completely different take of the song than the single and album versions, oddly enough. It looks like a live performance, although it doesn't sound like it's being done live in an acoustically hot space like that stage. The video also sports what I think are some multitracked Billy b-vox from the studio version.
I like "Waterfalls" (which I can't say for most of the album) but always thought it was an insane choice for a single. I'd have been shocked if it charted well.
It's Still Rock and Roll To Me Billy Joel never seemed to get much respect. I never thought he was all that great, to be honest, but I also think he managed to write a fair number of decent songs among the hackier tunes. He was never really as talented as he probably thought he was, but still was better than Rolling Stone made him out to be. So why the extreme negativity shown towards him by the critics? I think his 'sin' was that he never seemed authentic. I'm lifting this theory from a book I read recently which talked about authenticity in music. The book asks, why did it become so important for music to be 'real', so much so that perfectly talented musicians are often kicked to the curb because they are simply entertaining and not seemingly presenting their authentic selves for mass consumption? This obsession with authenticity goes back as far as old blues records in the 30s, extends through the 60s with the arguments against pure pop vs. rockers, and goes on to this day in hip hop, where rappers who have 'scars' somehow have more value than suburban kids who know how to rhyme but are otherwise 'faking it'. Below: he wasn't a rock... nor was he a rock lobster! Of course, even artists who are lauded as 'real' use artifice. Certainly Dylan did so; I would argue he was a master at it, often altering his life story in interviews to make himself seem more Guthrie than he was. So it's more than just presenting the factual truth of one's life, it's what specifically a musician chooses to be real about. With Billy Joel, it's not just that he seems fake; it's that he insists that he is a rocker, and the evidence just does not seem to bear that out. There are worse things than being labeled a 'piano man', but he can't let it go. Take Still Rock and Roll to Me for instance. It's a pretty good song; indeed, that entire album is one of the few times I really embraced Joel's sound and music. And yet, it still ISN'T rock and roll to me. It sounds more like a parody of rock than rock itself, one step removed from Sha Na Na. The lyrics namecheck rock things without involving us in their meaning (kinda like a later hit he had, We Didn't Start the Fire, where he counts on the listener to provide the resonance while he simply lists things that happened years ago). Even when he tells 'Rico' to play the sax, somehow I feel like the guy isn't really named Rico, it's just a name that sounds suitably 'rock' to call out at that moment. 'All right Benedict!' just wouldn't be 'street' enough, eh? Below: he looks about as threatening in this photo as David Naughton, or a suburban kid playing one of the Jets in his high school production of West Side Story. Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it is really an interesting issue with this guy. The rock press really hate him, and though I hardly think him a genius (and I agree sometimes that he's hard to take), I still think he has enough talent that he should probably not engender so much bile. To me, it feels like his lack of the proper rock street cred, combined with his insistence that he has it, is probably the flaw that draws their ire.
I think he's talking about the vocals, not the musical backing, which is boringly generic. To me, it's kind of like the precursor to 90s R&B.
The vocals and the melody. Not so much the arrangement, which I guess is a little like some early-'70s stuff, but to me "Shining Star" sounds very '80s in its production. Early '80s, anyhow. Gobs of reverb and ambience, an airy/breathy sound, the way the drums are mic'd and processed, and the general fidelity of the thing. I don't know if it's "hi-fi", but it certainly isn't muted or muffled. There's lots of space to the recording as well, although it's clearly compressed to some degree. It breathes. I guess it's kinda "generic", but I thought then and still think it's just beautiful. Like an R&B sound cloud. I love the way the guitar work sort of plucks its way thru as well, and the way the piano and chimes or whatever fall in. Overall, the effect is (surprisingly) not all that far removed from Elton's "Little Jeannie". Nothing dramatic or life changing, just a perfect little R&B/pop number. Great vamp at the ending, too.
Coming Up It's Still Rock and Roll To Me Two songs from very melodic songwriters who had a knack for catchy pop singles. Both songs are a bit novelty, but, well ... catchy and melodic. Both Paul and Billy were coming to the end of Top 10 chart reigns. Paul's actually going back to 1964. Unlike Billy, Paul's kind of known for this other band.
Actually, Billy Joel would still be cranking out Top 10 singles until 1984. Paul, would be less prolific on the charts, but would land his last solo Top 10 also in 1984.
Billy Joel continued to produce US top 10 singles through 1993 - "River of Dreams" went to #3. He also had 5 other top 10 US singles between 1984 and 1993...
I loved this song from the moment I heard it. Something about that silky voice. I wasn't listening to top 40 radio anymore at this point. I would just happen to hear songs here and there, and i'm glad this was one of them.
Macca yes. Billy Joel, no. Just the opposite in fact. He's thought of as a '70s act, and I think his best work easily hails from that decade, but his greatest commercial success on the singles charts - by far - came in the '80s. Including two more #1 singles after this one, one of them right at the end of the decade. We kind of forget now because he essentially retired after 1993 but Billy was one of the biggest stars of the '80s, second tier right after the likes of Madonna, Prince, MJ, George Michael, Whitney and Springsteen. In fact, he might have been bigger than Prince commercially, if not anywhere near as influential. Yup. He's the only one of the bunch to have essentially gone out on top. I thought that was a phenomenal single.
I didn't really care for ONJ, and she was getting on my nerves by this point, but I kinda liked this single. In fact, I'm pretty sure I bought a copy of it. It's a great cut, cutting edge arrangement and production, memorable tune and her performance is spine tingling. She'd hit on a great vocal formula with "A Little More Love" a couple of years before and here it feels like they're further refining that whole sound for the '80s. The Xanadu soundtrack, which I finally heard in its full glory on Spotify a few months back, is about a million times better than the idiotic film, which helped to bury the musical in Hollywood after Saturday Night Fever and Grease had (briefly) resurrected it. Oddly enough, in the UK it was the ultra-kitschy Jeff Lynne penned title cut which took Olivia to #1, not (in my opinion) the superior "Magic", which only managed to get to #32. The title cut was a hit here as well, getting to #8 later in 1980. It is an aural sugar rush and I love it as well, but it lacks the stunning vocal drama of "Magic", which really cemented Oliva's position as a superstar here in America. For a brief period in the post-disco void, before Blondie started having #1 hits again, Olivia was I think easily the biggest woman in American pop.
I liked this one, whereas I never cared for her “Xanadu” single. I think “Magic” fits ONJ’s vocal talents perfectly but it has an updated sound, as compared to the country style pop that she sang in the early & mid 1970s. I did not like some of her 80s singles, but this is a good one.
"Magic" is classic disco-ish lite rock. There's something about the song that really brings me back: this is definitely my parents' kind of music and I can remember hearing it hundreds of times growing up. But it's veyr well crafted, and the languid melody really brings it to me. It's a rather eerie song, with a fantastic band arrangement.
This is not correct. Billy Joel kept cranking out top 10 singles until 1989. Paul McCartney petered out in 1986.
"Magic" is a lite rock gem. It has a mysterious vibe that is reminiscent of "A Little More Love" but with some subtle new wave elements thrown in to updateher sound for the new decade.
Magic is an okay ONJ song. She sings adequately and the tune is well-crafted and production is good but it's not really anything special in my book.
My 45 of "Magic" is a promotional copy with the main song on both sides. At the time this was released, I was an employee of a radio station that called itself "Magic". I can tell you that our station jumped on the song as soon as possible and played it for many years. I recall the first time I heard it too. Having not seen the movie, or knowing anything about the soundtrack, I was out on a camping trip with my wife. Bringing along a radio, I was happy to hear that my station was receivable at that somewhat distant location, and I was tuned in on that Sunday morning. When the song played, I remember pointing out to my wife how apropos the record was, and it became an instant favorite. I bugged the program director for a copy and he provided the one pictured above. It wasn't until HBO played the movie that I finally saw it.
Everything about "Magic" is, well, magic. I dig the hi-hat work, too. And, John Farrar perfected the perfect layering of her vocals. I read somewhere that the trick was a particular type of mic she liked to use. ONJ had totally abandoned her country music side starting with this soundtrack. From here on out it's pure pop.
Yeah, and he even had a number one in 1989. Oops! Bad Wild Horse. I think I was thinking about the fact he was pretty much absent from the Top 10 from 1985 to 1989. At least I was right on Paul.* *sorta
