Not every songwriter is meant to have all of the glory that the pin-up stars love. More often than not, these artists are just interested in woodshedding their craft until they come up with the next great anthem that will knock everyone on their ass once they hear it. (Farout)
Billy Joel may have started working on his records because there was no one else to sing his songs, but even when he hit the big time, he admitted that he was far from perfect when speaking in French on the song ‘You Were the One’.
The worst thing you can do to the French is to massacre their language. After the show, I asked the promoter, ‘What happened?’ And he said, ‘Well, they thought that you were singing in Polish.’ That’s when I said, this song really sucks.”
While talking to the Los Angeles Times last year, the New York songwriter reflected upon his long and illustrious career, sharing that, if given his time again, he would omit “at least 25%” of his discography. Admittedly, when you have as many songs as Billy Joel, 25% forms a smaller part of that discography than you might expect, but it is certainly not an insignificant number. Joel even went as far as to pick out two tracks in particular that are the cause of some regret.
“I’ve written some real stinkers I wish I could take back,” Joel said, selecting 1989’s ‘When In Rome’ and 1980’s ‘C’était Toi’ as significant missteps. The latter track appeared on Joel’s seventh studio album, Glass Houses, which, as an entire record, was not one of the songwriter’s strongest efforts. ‘C’était Toi’ was certainly an odd track, with Joel reflecting, “I don’t even speak French, so I don’t know what I was doing.”
“Sometimes I’d get six or seven songs I thought were pretty damn good,” he remembered, “then there’d be a couple of squeeze-outs at the end just to fill up the album.” It was these filler tracks which formed the basis of Joel’s regrets, particularly with regard to tunes like ‘When In Rome’.
Luckily, Joel was able to use these experiences as something of a learning curve. “I realise now I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, and it certainly seems as though the singer became more selective with what material he allowed record companies to release as the years went by. Nevertheless, tracks like ‘When In Rome’ and ‘C’était Toi’ remain stains on an otherwise commendable discography.
Don't expect a new album after the surprise release of Billy Joel's first new song in nearly 20 years. "Nope!" he bluntly answered, when asked about a larger studio project by Variety.
"Who makes albums anymore anyway?" he added. "I think the only person making new albums these days is Taylor Swift or Olivia Rodrigo. I don't know other people who make albums. I don't know what the marketing of that is like now."
Plus, Joel doesn’t like writing, calling it “a form of torture.”
