Throwback Thursday: Billy Joel – “Uptown Girl”
Today is Billy Joel’s 70th birthday, and it also happens to be a Thursday, so there is no better opportunity to post the one and only Billy Joel song I know — thanks in large part to Irish boy band, Westlife. For someone with such an impressive discovery, I think it’s interesting that more of his music never made it onto my radar. For whatever it’s worth, I’ve always thought his live cover of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby” (a song I love) was amazing and possibly better than the original.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. “Uptown Girl” is a doo-wop song — hence why I love it so much — about a beautiful, classy, “uptown” girl who happens to be the object of a “backstreet” guy’s affection. Christie Brinkley, who would marry Billy Joel a few years later, plays the title character in the music video and is widely thought to be the inspiration of the song. However, according to Joel, the song was inspired by a number of different women and was initially titled “Uptown Girls.”
(Sidebar: That link includes an interesting anecdote about Elle Macpherson — who dated Billy Joel before Brinkley — and a then-unknown Whitney Houston, who was new to the modeling game and just a few years away from pop superstardom.)
“Uptown Girl” peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and not that I would know, but I imagine it is one of Billy Joel’s signature hits. Get into it.
PS: I don’t know what to make of the fact that the only black people in this video are the driver (who’s mean-mugging the whole time) and the two teenage boys randomly break-dancing in the workshop. I am just going to chalk it all up to the fact that this video was released in 1983.
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