With 15 UK Top 40 singles and 13 UK Top 40 albums, Billy Joel has been one of the most influential artists of all time, with his popularity still going strong and countless new fans emerging, with sell-out tours happening almost every year. Everyone has heard of his best-known tracks, such as ‘Uptown Girl’, ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’, and ‘Piano Man’. However, many of his tracks remain underexplored.

Some of Joel’s lesser known songs are brilliant in their own right. One standout example is ‘Vienna’, which was released as a B-side on the ‘Just the Way You Are’ single and as a song on the 1977 album The Stranger. ‘Vienna’ remained in relative obscurity for years until recently experiencing a surge in popularity. It has now become the most streamed track of his discography over the past year according to Last FM.

‘Summer, Highland Falls‘

‘Summer, Highland Falls’ is a track from the 1976 album Turnstiles. It starts with a staple of Billy Joel songs, a piano motif. This motif repeats non-stop throughout the song, with vocals and different instruments building upon it. The song has a melancholy tone, with the lyrics exploring the emotional turbulence of a relationship that is not going well. It touches on the theme of bipolar disorder with low notes symbolising the depression and the high notes the mania. In interviews about the song, Billy Joel often refers to one of his hands being sadness and the other being euphoria, which ties into the verse-ending line “It’s either sadness or euphoria.”

The combination of powerful lyrics and beautiful piano makes this one of Joel’s most emotionally resonant songs. It is not one to be missed.

‘Big Shot‘

‘Big Shot’ is one of my personal favourites, mainly because it is the song that got me into Billy Joel. It starts with a punchy beat that continues throughout the song. The track portrays Joel mocking a wealthy friend about trying to act like a “big shot” during a wild night out. He lists their antics throughout resulting in many clever and humorous lines.

My personal highlight is the chorus, which Joel performs in an exaggerated New York accent that sounds like it is taken straight out of a gangster film. The witticism of the lyrics, the punchiness of the beat, and the brilliance of the chorus all come together to make this a standout track.

The witticism of the lyrics, the punchiness of the beat, and the brilliance of the chorus all come together to make this a standout track

‘Goodnight Saigon‘

‘Goodnight Saigon’ is one of the most unorthodox and emotionally powerful tracks in Billy Joel’s catalogue. It begins with the sound of helicopter blades for nearly a minute before any music is introduced, setting a sombre tone. The song follows a group of American soldiers through their training and eventual deployment in the Vietnam War.

The main focus of the song is the camaraderie shared by the soldiers rather than the glorification of war. This is especially clear in the chorus, where a group of voices sing “We would all go down together” in a tone that conveys both unity and vulnerability. Joel captures the human cost of war, referencing the loss of youth, the transformation into “numbered corpses,” and the nightly fear of Viet Cong attacks.

The emotional weight and originality of this song make it an essential listen from Joel’s lesser-known works.

‘The Ballad of Billy the Kid‘

Despite being released as a single accompanying the famous album Piano Man, ‘The Ballad of Billy the Kid’ failed to chart in any singles chart. The song was conceived from Joel wanting to write a Western movie soundtrack, but no studio presented him the opportunity, so he imagined his own movie called ‘The Ballad of Billy the Kid’, and this would be its soundtrack.

The song tells the story of a cowboy called Billy the Kid, who shares little more than a name with the historical figure, listing his many exploits as an outlaw. It starts off with a slow build-up of clopping horse hooves, accompanied by piano and the classic Joel harmonica, which fits the Western spirit perfectly. The lyrics are witty and backed by Joel’s great vocals which are as strong as ever. A powerful instrumental interlude in the middle of the song explodes with energy and feels perfectly suited for the movie it never accompanied. This song is worth hearing for the instrumentation alone. If you play it in the background while you work, you might just feel like a cowboy yourself.

What is not so well known is that many of his more obscure songs offer the same amount of depth, creativity, and emotional resonance

‘Back in the USSR’ (Cover)

A special mention goes to ‘Back in the USSR’, which is not a Billy Joel original or part of a studio album. It appears on the live album Kohuept (the Russian word for “concert”), which was recorded during Joel’s 1987 tour of the Soviet Union. He was one of the first major Western rock acts to perform there after being invited as part of Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost.

This track is a cover of the famous Beatles song. Some listeners (and I) have even argued that Joel’s version surpasses the brilliant original. Rather than try to explain why, I simply recommend giving it a listen and deciding for yourself.

Everyone knows that Billy Joel’s greatest hits are great timeless classics, but what is not so well known is that many of his more obscure songs offer the same amount of depth, creativity, and emotional resonance. I hope after reading this you may take some time to explore his lesser-known songs and possibly become as much of a fan as I am.

Image: Billy Joel via Spotify