A few months ago, my mom recommended the new Billy Joel documentary (Billy Joel: And So It Goes). I love hearing artists talk about their work and the personal experiences that find their way into it. So I decided I too would watch, consuming the incredible 5 hour 2-part film in a series of short bursts as if spreading specks of glitter over the course of my summer.
Before the documentary, I didn’t really identify as a Billy Joel fan. I liked a lot of his songs. But I never sat down and thought much about the lyrics. Now, reading his words more closely, I am amazed at his singular gift.
In his documentary, Joel describes his own songwriting style as straightforward, as he often opts to express himself directly instead of building layers of metaphors for his audience to unpack. That simple presentation often belies impeccable craft. You listen to what he’s written and think, This sounds like stuff I hear every day, I could write a Billy Joel song! … but if you actually attempted to do that, you’d realize how difficult it is to fit the language of ordinary conversation into the tight, poetic packages Joel is able to create.
One of the songs I had heard over and over but never thought deeply about is “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” from the 1977 album The Stranger.
Listening more closely, I am floored by these specific aspects of his songwriting.
Secret Ingredient Rhymes
When I write music, I at times struggle with choosing a fresh word for a rhyme. Hasn’t everybody already paired “you” and “new”? “Here” and “near”? “Best” and “all the rest”?
In “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” Joel does use a lot of rhymes you could pluck straight out of any rhyming dictionary. However, he also employs several unique words within his rhymes, words that function like secret ingredients; they are unusual choices, yet they elevate the work without shining so brightly you’re only thinking about how surprising it is that they’re there in the first place.
Some examples:
- bottle of whites + appetite
- want + italian restaurant
- ’75 + July
- apartment + deep pile carpet
- waterbed + bread
- the greasers + pick up the pieces
There are also a few rhymes that use specific proper nouns that add color while somehow fitting perfectly into the form of the song:
- jeans + New Orleans
- Eddie + steadies
- finer + Parkway Diner
- Sears + years + tears
More and more often, I notice that modern songwriters include proper nouns or other hyper-specific words in their lyrics, as Billy Joel does here. Yet for me personally, that kind of thing can sometimes be distracting, especially if it’s just one word thrown in there to add personality while the rest of the lyrics live in a more general world. In “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” Joel fully commits. Detail is not a clever trick; it’s the very fabric of the work. It’s the reason the song can be 7 minutes long and somehow still feel devoid of filler.
The Familiar, Hold the Obvious
When it comes to the casual, dialogue-like lines in this song, Joel also gets specific. So many phrases here are familiar but not obvious choices to express the ideas Joel is getting at. This is where I feel his artistry really shines.
One of my favorite examples of this is a line used to describe how beloved Brenda and Eddie were:
Nobody looked any finer
Or was more of a hit at the Parkway Diner
The easy choice here would be “everyone loved them.” Or maybe “they had so many friends.” Instead, Joel calls them a “hit,” opting for a more unexpected word choice, and offers us a concrete location to place these characters in, giving the listener an even more colorful picture of Brenda and Eddie’s life together.
Another great example is the last line of this verse:
Brenda and Eddie were still going
Steady in the summer of ’75
When they decided the marriage would
Be at the end of July
Everyone said they were crazy
Brenda you know that you’re much too lazy
And Eddie could never afford to live that
Kind of life
But there we were wavin’ Brenda and
Eddie goodbye
I love all of these lines, but I find the ending (“But there we were wavin’ Brenda and Eddie goodbye”) especially effective storytelling. Imagine another line in there, for example: “But they didn’t listen no matter how hard that we tried.” This replacement expresses the same idea (Brenda and Eddie got married anyways), but it’s so much less vivid. Instead of explaining, Billy Joel paints.
Joel may be coming up with these lines on the first go, but for me, this is a good reminder to question my first instincts. Are the words I’ve written words someone else has inevitably written before? Can I bring something fresher to the table?
Can I afford not to?
Full Lyrics Below
A bottle of whites, a bottle of red
Perhaps a bottle of rose instead
We’ll get a table near the street
In our old familiar place
You and I, face to face
A bottle of red, a bottle of whites
It all depends upon your appetite
I’ll meet you any time you want
In our Italian Restaurant
Things are okay with me these days
Got a good job, I got a good office
I got a new wife, got a new life
And the family’s fine
We lost touch long ago
You lost weight I did not know
You could ever look so nice after
So much time
Do you remember those days hanging out
At the village green
Engineer boots, leather jackets
And tight blue jeans
You drop a dime in the box play a
Song about New Orleans
Cold beer, hot lights
My sweet romantic teenage nights
Brenda and Eddie were the
Popular steadies
And the king and the queen
Of the prom
Riding around with the car top
Down and the radio on
Nobody looked any finer
Or was more of a hit at the
Parkway Diner
We never knew we could want more
Than that out of life
Surely Brenda and Eddie would
Always know how to survive
Brenda and Eddie were still going
Steady in the summer of ’75
When they decided the marriage would
Be at the end of July
Everyone said they were crazy
Brenda you know that you’re much too lazy
And Eddie could never afford to live that
Kind of life
But there we were wavin’ Brenda and
Eddie goodbye
Well they got an apartment with deep
Pile carpet
And a couple of paintings from Sears
A big waterbed that they bought
With the bread
They had saved for a couple
Of years
They started to fight when the
Money got tight
And they just didn’t count on
The tears
They lived for a while in a
Very nice style
But it’s always the same in the end
They got a divorce as a matter
Of course
And they parted the closest
Of friends
Then the king and the queen went
Back to the green
But you can never go back
There again
Brenda and Eddie had had it
Already by the summer of ’75
From the high to the low to
The end of the show
For the rest of their lives
They couldn’t go back to
The greasers
The best they could do was
Pick up their pieces
We always knew they would both
Find a way to get by
That’s all I heard about
Brenda and Eddie
Can’t tell you more than I
Told you already
And here we are wavin’ Brenda
And Eddie goodbye
A bottle of red, a bottle of whites
Whatever kind of mood you’re in tonight
I’ll meet you anytime you want
In our Italian Restaurant
Andrea 
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