What I Learned from Billy Joel

In my last years of high school (when I was around 16-17 years old), I discovered Billy Joel’s music more deeply. Most people know about Uptown Girl and Piano Man, but he has performed such a great range of music that these are just scratching the surface. Today, I would like to review what I learned from listening to Billy Joel’s music.

My Life

This was probably the song I listened to most during high school. The message of My Life is quite simple. The people around you will try to guide you in this or that direction, but you must forge your own path at the end of the day. You are the one who must live with your decisions, not someone else.

Many things in life can be learned quite easily, but they are not truly grasped until you experience the message in many different ways. In listening to this over and over, I felt energized through the music. It felt refreshing to see that I was going to figure out my own life, however easy or hard this may be, and at the end of the day, I would be responsible for my own choices.

I think I just longed to be fully free and on my own, even though I had no idea what that would truly mean. With that freedom, whatever mistakes I may make, I would make them and get through them, and this was just a natural consequence of living out my own life. I would rather make my own mistakes than make someone else’s, trying to live out their dream.

Big Shot

Another song I listened to many times was Big Shot. Basically, this is about the dangers of always needing to appear to be better than everyone else. This song made me think about how we often worry too much about what other people think. Then in caring too much about this, we want to impress them so that they think we are greater than we actually are. We tend to become obsessed with having the appearance of greatness rather than actually attaining greatness.

Since this song showcases the dangers of trying to be too much of a big shot, I realized it was much better to be humble and to strive to be whatever it is I wanted to be, rather than to go for it for the sake of appearing to be something. To do that would only lead to emptiness.

This is not a lesson that is gathered all at once, but one that can be arrived at by listening to this song over and over, by contemplating the message, and by reflecting on one’s own life motivations. Are you doing what you do for the credit? For the positive reactions, you expect to get? Or because it actually matters to you?

All About Soul

This song indicates some deeper feeling that we sometimes can get if we find the right partner (or perhaps a bond that could happen with anyone). We may arrive at a point where we can sense things in each other without the need for words to express them. You may sense trouble, or emotions, or even a deep need that someone has.

Again, as I was 16-17 years old when I listened to this song, this was quite a deep message to me. I had always thought we needed things to be explicit and openly stated for them to be real. Yet here, Billy Joel was hinting at the idea that there was a deeper, more profound, intuitive way of knowing.

Listening to this song made me realize that it could be worthwhile to explore this deeper soul or deeper feeling that perhaps we all have. In general, this may be something that we haven’t properly explored or even developed.

We Didn’t Start the Fire.

I heard a legend somewhere that an American History teacher told his students to forget about the class textbook. Rather, they could learn everything stated in the song We Didn’t Start the Fire, and with this, they should get a good grade on the final exam. I wish I had had that teacher – I may have actually learned something.

Much of the era he is describing in We Didn’t Start the Fire happened before I was born, and so I never did get all of the references, but still, I found the song fascinating. You can’t help but get the message that there have always been tremendous problems throughout history and likely always will be.

If you don’t know your history, it’s easy to feel like you are in a unique position that has never happened in all of human history. And of course, part of this is true, as there is always something new happening. Yet much of what is already happening is just recycled and pops up in a modified form. It’s new, but it’s still old.

Perhaps it’s true we didn’t start the fire, but it seems we will all keep it burning.

Pressure

I did not give this song much of my focus until I got to college. Pressure is not the most aesthetically pleasing song out there, but what is interesting to me is that the song itself does brilliantly capture the feeling of being pressured near your breaking point and being fully overwhelmed.

When the pressure is so great, and you don’t know what to do, how can you handle it?

The main message here is that we can run or do whatever we want to get away from the pressure, but it will find us nonetheless. The best we can do is learn to manage our own feelings about it. There comes a time when there is no other way but to get through it on your own. Personally, I have found that there is great value in learning to get through the pressure. It’s always there or ready to pop up somehow, so this is something we have to learn to deal with.

Other Songs

There are other songs that I listened to many, many times and that left some impression on me, but I don’t have too much to say about them. I’m not sure how to put in words the lessons or impressions that I gathered from them. Nothing beats just listening.

Those songs are Keeping the Faith, Only the Good Die Young, Tell Her About It, Piano Man, She’s Always a Woman, Just the Way You Are, and Allentown. Sometimes I just liked the song. Sometimes I may have gathered a different message than he intended. Sometimes I may have just absorbed the feeling, and it didn’t matter the words used.

By the way, I purposely didn’t mention any lyrics for legal reasons. Also, if you are interested in understanding what I have said here more deeply, I fully recommend listening to the songs on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen to your music.