Billy Joel reveals two ‘non-woke’ songs he wouldn’t write today

Legendary American songwriter Billy Joel has revealed two “non-woke” songs that he may not have written in today’s political climate.

The Piano Man singer is one of the best-selling musicians of all time, but the 73-year-old admitted in a recent interview with the LA Times that if he could do it over again he would un-write “at least 25 per cent” of his songs.

“I’ve written some real stinkers I wish I could take back,” he said, citing When in Rome from his 1989 album Storm Front and C’était Toi from 1980′s Glass Houses.

“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, then there’d be a couple of squeeze-outs at the end just to fill up the album. I realise now I shouldn’t have done that.”

Joel released 12 successful pop and rock albums between 1971 and 1993 but then famously stopped writing new material, save for Fantasies and Delusions, his 2001 album of classical compositions.

Billy Joel playing at Eden Park in December 2022. Photo / Dean Purcell

Speaking to the LA Times, Joel said he didn’t make that decision “based on whether it was right or wrong”.

“It just felt like it was time for me to stop writing songs,” he said. “I didn’t have the same motivation anymore. You need inspiration to create good new music, and if you don’t have it, don’t bother. Get off the treadmill, for Christ’s sake.”

Asked whether he considered “the current cultural and political climate” when putting together a set list, Joel conceded it crossed his mind with a song like Captain Jack, which references “the junkies and the closet queens”.

“You mean are they woke? It crosses my mind,” he said.

“But Captain Jack has gotten real boring to me. The verse is just two chords over and over again, and it’s this dreary story of some suburban kid jacking off at home. My mind starts to wander during the song, so I don’t do it even though people want to hear it.”

He agreed that Only the Good Die Young was also a tough sell by modern woke standards. The song, featured on 1977′s The Stranger, is written from the perspective of a young man determined to have sex with a Catholic girl.

Lyrics include “come out Virginia, don’t let me wait, you Catholic girls start much too late, and they say there’s a heaven for those who will wait, some say it’s better, but I say it ain’t”.

“It’s occurred to me recently that I’m trying to talk some poor innocent woman into losing her virginity because of my lust,” Joel said.

“It’s kind of a selfish song — like, who cares what happens to you? What about what I want? But on the other hand, it was of its time. This was written in the mid-’70s, and I was trying to seduce girls. Why bulls**t about it?”