Throughout history, relatively few artists have produced completely flawless cultural and artistic output. Mistakes, errors, and misplaced efforts are all part of establishing your voice as a musician. As a result, even pop music legends like Billy Joel have a few songs that aren’t among their many timeless successes. While the positives much exceed the negatives in Joel’s case, these songs continue to cause him regret.
In a story that appears to be fairly common among musicians of Joel’s generation, the songwriter was originally motivated on his journey to musical stardom after watching The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. The Beatles’ school of pop mastery may help explain Joel’s almost limitless ability to make hits. The songwriter quickly found his commercial stride, becoming a definitive voice of rock and pop in the early 1970s with hits like ‘Piano Man’.
As Joel’s career grew, he experimented with a wide range of musical styles and genres, but his main focus was on soft rock. From grand piano-based compositions in the early 1970s to the 1980s pop mastery of ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire,’ the only constant in Joel’s music has been commercial success. In the United Kingdom, the songwriter has had 15 songs in the top 40 singles charts over the years, however not all of them are as memorable as ‘Piano Man’.
While speaking with the Los Angeles Times last year, the New York songwriter reflected on his long and famous career, stating that if given the opportunity, he would remove “at least 25%” of his repertoire. Admittedly, when you have as many songs as Billy Joel, 25% is a lower proportion of your repertoire than you might imagine, but it is absolutely not unimportant. Joel even went so far as to identify two tunes in particular that have caused him remorse.
“I’ve written some real stinkers I wish I could take back,” Joel admitted, citing 1989’s ‘When In Rome’ and 1980’s ‘C’était Toi’ as major mistakes. The latter track featured on Joel’s seventh studio album, Glass Houses, which, as a whole, was not one of the singer’s best works. ‘C’était Toi’ was an unusual track, with Joel reflecting, “I don’t even speak French, so I don’t know what I was doing.”
According to the songwriter, these varied faults stemmed from the immense pressure he put on himself to regularly produce successes. “Sometimes I’d get six or seven songs I thought were pretty damn good,” he recalled; “then there’d be a couple of squeeze-outs at the end just to fill up the album.” Joel’s regrets stemmed from these filler tracks, particularly ‘When In Rome’.
Fortunately, Joel was able to turn these events into something of a learning curve. “I realise now I shouldn’t have done that,” he remarked, and it appears that the singer became more selective about what work he permitted record companies to release over the years. Nonetheless, compositions like ‘When In Rome’ and ‘C’était Toi’ are blemishes on an otherwise impressive record.
