Billy Joel Song Quotations

I look at some of the songs I wrote years ago and I can't believe I wrote such crap.

I would say the songs that have different lyrics. I always write the music first, and there's a couple of songs on this box set that have different lyrics from what ended up on the final recording.

I started just concentrating on songwriting when I was abut 20; I'd been in rock bands six or seven years, kinda got that out of my system, I said, "ok, you ain't gonna be a rock star, you don't look like a rock star, it probably ain't gonna happen. So what you should do is write songs and maybe other people will do your songs."

I never stopped writing music, I just stopped writing songs. I've been writing music continually ever since the last album of original tunes, "River Of Dreams" in '93.

I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another.

I was thinking of the Four Seasons, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and when I was thinking "Uptown Girl!" I was trying to sing like Frankie Valli. They had a song called "Ragdoll," which was about a poor girl and a rich guy. So I just flipped it around and made it about a rich girl and a poor guy.

I actually wrote the song first as "well, it's 9 o'clock on a Saturday." That bit. Then I said, You know what? It needs some kind of an introduction to kind of set the mood and set the flavor. So I just played this kind of cocktail lounge thing, the hustle and bustle of waitresses going by - that kind of thing.

I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14 - to meet women.

My songs are like my kids.

Don't go changing, to try and please me You never let me down before.

She's got a way about her, And everywhere she goes, a million dreams of love surround her, everywhere.

Sing us a song you're the piano man. Sing us a song tonight. Cause we're all in the mood for a melody, And you've got us feeling all right.

You can speak your mind But not on my time.

I did write a letter to the archdiocese who'd banned the song, Only the Good Die Young, asking them to ban my next record.

Here I am starting a franchise and I'm gonna be 65 years old. I should've started this in 1978... I wrote like 300 songs and I'm gonna have to re-learn some of them!

Classical music always had a great influence on me. In fact some of my songs have a classical theme in mind.

I don't know if people are going to remember some of these songs we're going to do tonight. Hell, I don't know if we're going to remember some of these.

I am the entertainer, I've come to do my show You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life It was a beautiful song but it ran too long If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05.

They say that no one's gonna play this on the radio. They said the melancholy blues were dead and gone. But only songs like these played in minor keys, keep those memories holding on.

I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints - the sinners are much more fun.

In an age of incompetence, I've been able to last in this crazy business. I actually know how to play my ax and write a song. That's my job.

I hate making videos. Songs are not visual. You get it out of the air. You don't watch it on MTV.