Billy Joel’s 10 Best Billboard Hot 100 Hits

Listening to this, yes, soulful and anthemic love song to his then-wife Christie Brinkley — who painted the River of Dreams album cover — you’d never know the couple was headed to divorce the following year. Originally titled “The Motorcycle Song” and considerably faster, it’s a tune that makes your heart soften and your fist punch the air, especially when Joel hits the na-na-na-na crescendo after the hushed final chorus (Color Me Badd helped out on those). “All About Soul” was adopted by the New York Knicks during their NBA playoff run a decade later. Listen here.

Asked to choose his definitive song on the red carpet at the 2024 Grammy Awards, Joel told E! it was “And So It Goes” — so who are we to argue? It’s a melancholy tale of woe, inspired by Joel’s brief affair with a much younger Elle Macpherson and drawing on the 17th century Scottish ballad “Barbara Allen.” The melody, Spartan arrangement and the air of weary resignation in Joel’s delivery are heat-seeking missiles to the heart, the kind of song that leaves you stilled and chilled well after it ends. Listen here.

When it was released in 1976, Billboard said the opening track to Joel’s fourth studio album “has the intensity and flair of Phil Spector’s early ’60s classics,” which was undoubtedly music to his ears. “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” started with the drumbeat of the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and paid homage to the Wall of Sound without slavishly recreating it. Its moment in the Hot 100 would have to wait five years, however, until a 1980 live performance from Milwaukee was released as a single from Joel’s Songs in the Attic album, finally giving one of his great songs its chart due. Listen here.

Another love song from The Stranger, “Just the Way You Are,” was the bigger hit, but this had even more heart in its beautifully rendered and understated arrangement. The song is about his first wife (and eventual manager) Elizabeth, whom he divorced in 1982. The sentiment is still lovely and universal. Listen here.

Coming five months after “Goodnight Saigon,” Joel’s sobering Vietnam War reflection from The Nylon Curtain, this first blast from its follow-up does a buoyant 360. It’s as infectious an expression of love as you’ll find anywhere this side of the Motown catalog, a joyous burst of happy energy housed in unapologetic retrograde. Offering “good information from a man who’s made mistakes,” it’s one part counsel, one-part inner dialogue inspired by his courtship of second wife Christie Brinkley. The feeling with his audience was mutual, as it became his second No. 1. Listen here.

A year before fellow piano man Elton John released his own African-pop hybrids on The Lion King soundtrack, Joel took a float down a stream that blended polyrhythms, gospel spirituals and doo-wop. He’d never recorded anything like this before — and, in fact, said that he tried NOT to write it when the idea first came to him in a (you guessed it) dream — but that’s part of what made it so appealing. So did its compositional integrity, along with the counterpoint of a stellar chorus of backing vocalists. It was nominated for record of the year at the 1994 Grammy Awards. Listen here.

Joel’s first chart-topper was a clever expression of a (then) 30-year-old man refusing to be consigned to rock n’ roll’s old guard. As punk and new wave encroached, Joel was smart enough to recognize the similarities in styles, trends and attitudes, and skilled enough to explain it in less than three minutes — with a shout-out to kindred spirit Bruce Springsteen and cohort Clarence Clemons before the sax solo. “Everybody’s talkin’ ’bout the new sound/Funny, but it’s still rock and roll to me” — ‘nuf said. Listen here.

What started with a reggae beat turned into an upbeat pop classic with its tongue firmly planted in its unrequited cheek. Joel’s nostalgic plea to a real-life high school crush (Virginia Callahan) was greeted with shock, finger-wagging recriminations and attempts to ban it — which of course only made it that much more popular. The consensus? More of us would rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. Listen here.

The second single from the outward looking The Nylon Curtain joined a parade of earnest early ‘80s paeans about the Rust Belt, whose serious decline was inspiring all manner of songs at the time. Started as “Levittown” on his native Long Island, “Allentown” sang better and was a stronger fit for the theme, but despite its specific references it could really be about Anytown USA. “That was right in the middle of the Reagan era, and things were changing in America,” Joel explained. “I was very aware of it. It was baby boomer peaking time, the early ‘80s. Things did change then. I was very proud of that album.” There’s resilience in Joel’s tone, too, and while he laments that “it’s getting very hard to stay” it’s crucial that the song ends by declaring “we’re living here in Allentown,” maintaining a semblance of hope. Listen here.

The title track from Joel’s second album became his signature song upon release, a don’t-leave-any-gig-without-it tune whose vividly drawn characters — seen through the eyes of our cocktail bar-playing narrator — have resonated for more than a half century. Joel noted that, “There’s a line in ‘Piano Man’ that I sing — ‘I know that it’s me that they’re coming to see to forget about life for awhile’ — and the audience applauds after that line and I realize, ‘Wow, they’re really hear to get away from the news. They needed a break.’ They wanted something to take them somewhere else, and that’s my job.” He did it well; “Piano Man” was not only his first Hot 100 song but has also been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. Listen here.