I know I am late to the party, but I finally sat down and watched the Billy Joel documentary on HBO, Billy Joel: And So It Goes. As I watched it, I found myself thinking again about the strange and wonderful thing that happens when a songwriter becomes part of the furniture of your life.
There are artists you admire and there are artists you respect, and then there are artists whose songs seem to have always been there, playing somewhere in the background while life was happening.
Billy Joel is one of those artists.
There used to be an old saying, “Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.” I have always thought the same thing could almost be said of Billy Joel. Everybody may not list him as their favorite artist and everybody may not own every record, but put on one of his songs in a room full of people, and sooner or later someone starts tapping a foot, humming, and finally says, “Oh, I forgot how much I love this one.”
Of course, everybody associates him with “Piano Man.” And rightly so, he is the Piano Man. That song is not just a hit; it is practically an American campfire song. A barroom hymn: a gathering of lonely people under fluorescent lights, each one carrying a story.
But Billy Joel is much more than the “Piano Man.”
The documentary reminded me of that. It reminded me that beneath the famous songs, the radio staples, and the arena singalongs, there is a deeper Billy Joel catalog full of longing, humor, regret, melancholy, bravado, tenderness, and home.
So instead of writing about the obvious hits, I wanted to write about my five favorite Billy Joel songs, most of which I would call deep tracks, or at least songs that deserve to be sat with a little longer.
These are the Billy Joel songs that have stayed with me.
1. “Rosalinda’s Eyes”
“Rosalinda’s Eyes” may be one of the most beautiful songs Billy Joel ever wrote, and yet it is not usually the first song people mention when his name comes up.
That is part of its charm.
There is something warm and dusky about it, something that feels like late evening light coming through an open window. The song has a Latin-tinged gentleness to it, but it never feels like a costume. It feels like affection, like memory, like a man looking at someone he loves and realizing that love has given him a place to rest.
One of the things Billy Joel does so well is write songs that are not merely about romance, but about shelter. He understands that love is not only fireworks. Sometimes love is a room, a look, a familiar face after a long day, or a set of eyes that tells you that you are not alone.
“Rosalinda’s Eyes” has that quality.
It is not loud, nor does it demand attention. Rather, it simply sits there, beautifully crafted, like a small lamp in a dark room. And maybe that is why I love it. Some songs announce themselves, while others wait for you to find them when you are ready.
This one waits.
2. “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”
Now, calling “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” a deep track may be a little questionable, because many Billy Joel fans rightly consider it one of his masterpieces. But it is not “Piano Man,” “Uptown Girl,” or “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” It is not always the first song casual listeners reach for.
But it should be.
“Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” is not just a song. It is practically a short story cycle set to music. Beginning with a table, a bottle, and a conversation. Two people catching up. Old friends looking backward. Then suddenly the song opens into youth, ambition, romance, collapse, and the strange sadness of ordinary life.
Brenda and Eddie are not just characters. They are people we all know, the couple from high school everyone thought would make it: the ones who had the car, the looks, the laughter, and the momentum. Then life did what life does, it kept going.
That is what makes the song so powerful. It does not sneer at them nor does not sentimentalize them either, it simply remembers them.
And memory is one of the great themes of Billy Joel’s music.
In that sense, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” belongs beside every family table, every old photograph, every class reunion, every conversation that begins with, “Do you ever wonder what happened to…”
The genius of the song is that it makes the particular universal. We may not know Brenda and Eddie, but we know what it is to look back and realize that life did not turn out the way we thought it would.
And still, somehow, the bottle is opened. The conversation continues and the music plays.
3. “Summer, Highland Falls”
If I had to choose one Billy Joel song that tells the truth about the interior life, it might be “Summer, Highland Falls.”
There is a line of emotional weather running through this song. Not despair exactly. Not hope exactly. Something more honest than either. It is the sound of a man who knows that life is full of contradictions, and that most of us live somewhere between blessing and breakdown.
That is a deeply human place to write from.
Some songs try to solve sadness. “Summer, Highland Falls” does not. It lets sadness have its say, it lets beauty and sorrow sit at the same table.
That is what I love about it.
The piano itself feels restless, almost like thought. It moves the way the mind moves when it is trying to make peace with things it cannot fully explain. And the melody has that Billy Joel gift: elegant but accessible, sophisticated but never cold.
For me, this song is about the strange balance of being alive. We are grateful and wounded, strong and fragile. Capable of joy, but yet sometimes a single memory can undo us.
I think that is why the song lasts. It does not offer cheap comfort, rather it offers companionship.
And sometimes companionship is the truest comfort of all.
4. “I’ve Loved These Days”
“I’ve Loved These Days” is a song about looking around at the very thing that is passing away and loving it anyway.
There is a certain sadness that comes when you know a season of life cannot last. Maybe that season was foolish, or maybe it was extravagant. Maybe it was filled with too much drink, too many late nights, too much pretending. But it was also real, it was lived, it was full of faces and rooms and laughter and music.
Billy Joel captures that feeling perfectly.
“I’ve Loved These Days” is not nostalgia in the cheap sense. It is not merely saying, “Wasn’t everything better back then?” It is more complicated in that is the sound of someone recognizing that even flawed days can be beloved days.
That is a hard truth to admit.
Many of us have seasons we would not repeat but cannot quite reject. We have chapters that formed us, even if they also wounded us, we have memories that are both foolish and precious.
This song gives voice to that.
It is farewell music, but not bitter farewell; a glass raised at closing time, the last look around the room before the lights come up, the ache of gratitude for something already disappearing.
And maybe that is part of growing older: learning to bless even the imperfect days, because they too have carried us here.
5. “Somewhere Along the Line”
“Somewhere Along the Line” is early Billy Joel, and it has the looseness and wit of a young songwriter already learning how to smile at the hard facts of life.
The song has a kind of jaunty wisdom to it. It moves lightly, but underneath that lightness is a recognition that choices have consequences. Life may give us laughter, appetite, youth, and pleasure, but somewhere along the line the bill comes due.
That theme runs through a lot of Billy Joel’s work. He is often funny, but rarely shallow. Even when the music swings, the lyrics know that time is undefeated.
What I like about “Somewhere Along the Line” is that it does not preach. It observes, it winks a little, and it tells the truth without turning into a sermon.
And that may be one reason Billy Joel connects with so many people. He writes about ordinary human weakness in a way that feels recognizable. He knows we are all a little ridiculous and that we all make promises we do not keep, because we all imagine we can outrun time.
Then time catches up.
But even then, the song keeps moving. There is mercy in that movement. The music does not stop just because we have been foolish.
Thank God for that.
Bonus: “You’re My Home”
I have to include “You’re My Home” as a bonus, because it may be one of Billy Joel’s most tender songs.
At its heart, it is a song about belonging. Not a house or an address; not furniture or walls, but a person.
That idea has always moved me.
Home is one of the great themes of human life. We spend so much of our lives looking for it, building it, losing it, remembering it, returning to it. Sometimes home is a kitchen table or a childhood song, sometimes it is a hand reaching for yours in the dark or the person whose presence makes the world feel less foreign.
“You’re My Home” understands that.
It is a love song, yes, but it is also a pilgrim song, it says that home is not always where we thought it was. Sometimes home travels with us, sometimes home is given to us in another person.
That is why music matters so much. A song can become a kind of home too. You hear the opening chords, and suddenly you are back somewhere. Back in a car, back in a kitchen, back with someone you loved in a season you thought you had lost.
Billy Joel has written many songs like that.
Songs that bring us back, songs that tell the truth, songs that remind us that joy and sorrow are often sitting in the same booth, sharing the same bottle, waiting for the piano player to begin again.
Final Thoughts on Billy Joel and the Songs That Stay
Watching Billy Joel: And So It Goes reminded me that the best artists do more than entertain us. They help us remember ourselves.
Billy Joel’s music is full of characters, places, jokes, regrets, longings, and melodies that feel like they have always existed. He can write a barroom anthem, a street-corner story, a love song, a confession, and a farewell. He can make us laugh at ourselves, ache for what is gone, and feel strangely grateful for the whole messy business of being alive.
Yes, he is the Piano Man.
But he is also one of our great chroniclers of ordinary life.
And maybe that is why nobody doesn’t like Billy Joel.
Because somewhere along the line, he wrote a song for nearly all of us.
More Reflections from Food For The Way:
- Song Sung Blue: A Reflection on Music and Memory
- Old Pictures Can’t Tell Us Everything
- Back at Grandma’s Table
- Grandma’s Table
For more information on Billy Joel check out:
