Straight From Billy’s Mouth
An interview with Joel from the book, In Their Own Words by Bill DeMain, gives us some insight. The interview helps us get a look into what the musician himself felt about it, the song, and everything about it. “I had turned forty. It was 1989, and I said, “Okay, what’s happened in my life? I wrote down the year 1949… It was kind of a mind game,” Joel explained.
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“[It’s] one of the few times I’ve written the lyrics first, which should be obvious to why I usually prefer to write the music first because the melody is horrendous. It’s like a mosquito droning. It’s one of the worst melodies I’ve ever written. I kind of like the lyric, though.”