I need to be honest with you: I don’t know all the words to NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye. I also don’t know all the words to London Bridge, Lipgloss, and a whole lot of other songs my friends know by heart… and expect me to. What can I say? They grew up listening to those songs, but I didn’t.
My mom controlled the music in our car and as a child, I spent a significant amount of time in cars. This meant that the majority of my musical education came from her. Lucky for me, this education consisted of mostly Billy Joel‘s jazz-infused rock ‘n’ roll. As each song played, my mom, Billy Joel superfan(TM) would tie it to a life lesson, often telling me the story behind the song.
Through Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, she taught me that popularity in school isn’t everything. I was bullied in grade school and middle school and she would often play this song for me and every time felt down about not having friends. When he sang of Brenda and Eddie, she would emphasize that while everyone praised them for their convertible car and title as king and queen of the prom, their happiness was short lived.
I learned that it was probably a good thing that I wasn’t living the ‘best days of my life’ while I was still so young and that the popularity that people used to make my life difficult would be short-lived.
Through Piano Man, she taught me that even when you have failed or found yourself in a rough spot, you can admire the world around you for all the sadness and joy that’s in it. She often pointed out the line in which a bar goer asks Joel, ‘man, what are you doing here?’ and she would explain how Joel had signed a bad contract and was forced him to wait it out by playing in a piano bar. “But,” she would say to 7-year-old me, “if he hadn’t spent that time in a piano bar wondering why he was there, he never would have met those people, never would have learned their stories, and we would have never had this song.”
She was trying to teach me that failures are not all bad; that although they can be tough, beautiful things come from them. I’m still learning this lesson and often struggle to remember it. But I often find myself pretending I’m Billy Joel, imagining the stories of the people I see all around me.
Through Vienna, she taught me the importance of slowing down. I struggled with anxiety as a child and would play this song for me when I felt like I wasn’t enough. The lyrics seemed to fit my life perfectly.
To give you some insight on younger-Annie: I was planning for college when I was in the fourth-grade and panicked that I would never find a job. I was so ahead of myself that I didn’t let myself live in the moment. Like the song, I could always ‘see when I was wrong,’ but I couldn’t see when I was right.
I was passionate, prideful and always searching for satisfaction in the realization of dreams, but I had so many that they could never all come true. Vienna was the song she told me to remind me that it would be okay. I still turn to it when I need to breathe.
Through these songs and so many more, she taught me that music could be a way to express emotion and convey messages. Joel’s style of rock incorporates jazz and rhythm & blues still influence the music I listen to today. The most important musical lesson I learned from Billy Joel, however, was that a song could speak for me when words failed.
In a very real way, I think that Joel’s style of writing about his own experiences and writing to or for someone influenced my decision to write songs. I wanted to be able to create something that could be used to explain my experiences and be used by others to explain theirs. Similar to Joel’s Lullabye, the second song I ever wrote was written for my mother. It expressed the overwhelming love and support that I have for her and made references to the phrases that we say to each other during hard times.
Thank you, mom and thank you, Billy Joel. Your music helped me put words to emotions when I didn’t know how. It reminded me that there was a future past the bullying, the panic and the sadness.
Looking forward to seeing you in Winston-Salem, NC on October 13, 2018.
Annie Proctor 