The other day while jogging the song “All For Leyna” came up on my Sansa Clip and it took me back to when Billy Joel was lean, kind of angry and had hair. It is perhaps fitting but sad that he has become what he wrote about in “I’ve Loved These Days”, a song penned for 1976’s Turnstiles album and which his Wikipedia entry refers to as “a tongue-in-cheek expression of regret at leaving behind Hollywood’s decadence”:
We light our lamps for atmosphere,
And hang our hopes on chandeliers.
We’re going wrong, we’re gaining weight,
We’re sleeping long and far too late.
And so it’s time to change our ways …
But I’ve loved these days.
…
We drown our doubts in dry champagne,
And soothe our souls with fine cocaine.
I don’t know why I even care
We’ll get so high and get nowhere.
We’ll have to change our jaded ways
But I’ve loved these days.
None of which is directly related to the trivial thing I’m about to discuss, which is the incongruity seen in the video of Uptown Girl. The video, like the song and album it is from (An Innocent Man), is an homage to early 1960s pop. You can see this in evidence here with the old-fashioned neon sign:
And again here:
The mechanics, greasers and others all fit the theme, then about two-thirds of the way through the video you get this:
Two young guys robot dancing in belly shirts. This is the exact sort of thing the expression “WTF?” was invented for. The only thing I can think of is they were trying to compete somehow with Thriller, which was out around the same time. Still, it is a minor blemish on an otherwise fine video. Okay, one other blemish would be when Billy Joel tries to dance but you can forgive him for that because he did not wear a belly shirt.
Also, how did we grow used to watching small, artifact-riddled videos, anyway?