Billy Joel by Joshua S. Duchan

Author:Joshua S. Duchan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-01-13T05:00:00+00:00

“Holding You Here Is So Hard To Do”: Songs of Comfort amid Separation

“C’Etait Toi (You Were the One)” is distinctive in Joel’s catalog in two ways. It is his only song to prominently feature a language other than English (in this case, French) and also the song Joel considers the worst he ever wrote (Scaggs 2005; Sinclair 2002). Yet it is not only a good example of the trends found in the love songs already discussed, but also demonstrates the second recurring theme in Joel’s songs about relationships: offering and seeking comfort amid separation.

A guitar accompanies Joel’s voice as he sings of sitting alone, drinking and feeling lonely. Bielen claims that the accordion lends the song a “continental flair” (2011, 55). The singer’s desire is plainly stated in the first chorus, sung in English: “I’m looking for comfort that I can take from someone else.” He looks in vain for his lover’s face. After all, he continues, she is the only one “who can save me from myself. You were the only one.” As he sings the last two words in three long syllables, the melody descends from B to A to G, the song’s tonic pitch, musically signaling a point of arrival, a conclusion. Two verses follow in French before Joel sings the chorus one last time in English.

The tense in which Joel’s lyrics describe his feelings reveals the separation he feels. His lover is the only one who “can save” him—present tense—but the conclusion that that ability is unique to her is stated in the past tense: “You were the only one.” In fact, all of the song’s lyrics employ the present tense except for this telling line. Thus, “C’Etait Toi” reveals this sad and lonely lover’s emotional state in the active terms of the present, as if listeners are sitting at the table with him, but that present also contains the crushing realization that the love he seeks is now a thing of the past.

Comfort and separation are equally evident in “State of Grace,” which differs from “C’Etait Toi” in that the protagonist’s lover is present—but only sort of. She may be in the room but her head is somewhere else, in the state named by the song’s title. The song thereby reveals that physical presence does not always mean emotional presence. Joel admits that reality is not always pleasant (“granted this world is not a perfect place”), but it is reality nonetheless (“still it’s the world that I’m in”). While he is firmly rooted in real life, she is able to leave it behind, effecting separation and creating a distance between them that he cannot close. “Holding you here is so hard to do,” he sings exasperatedly. “I’m losing you.”

Joel uses three musical elements to convey this sense of separation and the “state of grace” his lover escapes to: a delay effect, instrumentation, and harmony. The song’s opening melody is played in octaves on the piano and treated with a delay effect, so each note echoes a split second after it is initially played.

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