Billy Joel "The River Of Dreams (Single & Video)"

"The River of Dreams" is a song by American musician Billy Joel. It is the title track and first single from his 1993 album River of Dreams. The song was a hit, peaking at number 3 on the United States and UK charts, making it Joel's best charting single of the decade as well as his final top ten in either country to date. It also hit the top spot in Australia, New Zealand, and on the Canadian and US Adult Contemporary charts. The song was produced by Joe Nicolo and Danny Kortchmar.

At least four versions of the song have been recorded and released. Two versions (released years later) include a bridge section containing a piano interlude paralleling Joel's melody from his song "Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel)," which is from the same album. These versions can be found on the boxed sets My Lives and Complete Hits Collection: 1973–1999 – but even these versions differ from each other, both in length and in arrangement: one, for instance, has more percussion. A fourth mix appears as a bonus cut on the UK CD single of "River of Dreams" — the "percapella mix" done by Nicolo.

"The River of Dreams" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1994, but lost out to "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston. Joel performed the song at the ceremony, and abruptly stopped in the middle of his performance in order to verbally protest Frank Sinatra's lifetime achievement speech being cut off earlier in the night.

In 1993, Gary Zimmerman, a songwriter from Long Island, New York, attempted to sue Joel for ten million dollars, claiming more than half of "The River of Dreams" was based on his 1986 song "Nowhere Land." Joel said he had no knowledge of Zimmerman or his music, and Zimmerman dropped the lawsuit in 1994.

The song borrows from the traditions of black gospel music and spirituals. The production includes a gospel choir and the lyrics deal with inner peace and the afterlife. Joel sings "Not sure about a life after this. God knows I've never been a spiritual man," while stating that at night he walks along "The River of Dreams" so he can "find what he's been looking for." At 3 minutes 45 seconds, Joel can be heard singing The Cadillacs' version of "Gloria" as the music fades out.

The music video for the song was directed by Andy Morahan. The ferry featured is the Rocky Hill – Glastonbury Ferry in Connecticut. The video was shot on the Providence & Worcester railroad bridge spanning the Connecticut River in the city of Middletown, Connecticut. Joel and three backup singers appear throughout the video standing on the western span of the bridge, with the open center section of the bridge behind them. Other locations that were filmed in the music video are near Portland, East Haddam, and Old Saybrook, Connecticut. The scenes inside the tobacco barn with Joel on the piano were filmed inside a still-used tobacco barn in South Glastonbury, Connecticut.

Joel's then-wife Christie Brinkley can be seen painting the artwork that features on the front cover of the album River of Dreams. She is the illustrator who painted the actual album artwork, and each single released from the album featured one part of the large painting as cover art.

Track listing

1. "The River of Dreams" – 4:05
2. "The River of Dreams" (Percapella mix)
3. "The Great Wall of China" – 5:45

Japanese 3" CD single  All songs written by Billy Joel.

1. "The River of Dreams" – 4:07
2. "No Man's Land" – 4:49

Billy Joel "We Didn't Start The Fire (Single & Video)"

"We Didn't Start the Fire" is a list song written and performed by American musician Billy Joel. The pop-rock song was released as a single on September 27, 1989, and later released as part of Joel's album Storm Front, on October 17, 1989. Its fast-paced lyrics include brief references to 118 significant political, cultural, scientific, and sporting events between 1949, the year of Joel's birth, and 1989, in a mainly chronological order. The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became Joel's third single to reach No.1 on the United States Billboard Hot 100 in late 1989. The Storm Front album, became Joel's third album to reach No. 1 in the United States."We Didn't Start the Fire", particularly in the 21st century, has become the base of many pop-cultural parodies, and continues to be repurposed in various television shows, advertisements and comedic productions.

Joel got the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend of Sean Lennon who said "It's a terrible time to be 21!" Joel replied to him, "Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful." The friend replied, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties". Joel retorted, "Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?" Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song. Joel has also criticized the song on strictly musical grounds. In 1993, when discussing it with documentary filmmaker David Horn, Joel compared its melodic content unfavorably to his song "The Longest Time": "Take a song like 'We Didn't Start the Fire.' It's really not much of a song ... If you take the melody by itself, terrible. Like a dentist drill."

When asked if he deliberately intended to chronicle the Cold War with his song he responded, "It was just my luck that the Soviet Union decided to close down shop [soon after putting out the song]", and that this span "had a symmetry to it, it was 40 years" that he had lived through. He was asked if he could do a follow-up about the next couple of years after the events that transpired in the original song, he commented "No, I wrote one song already and I don't think it was really that good to begin with, melodically."

A music video for the single was directed by Chris Bloum. The video begins with a newly married couple entering their 1940s-style kitchen, and shows events in their domestic life over the next four decades, including the addition of children, their growth, and later, grandchildren, and the eventual death of the family's father. The passage of time is also depicted by periodic redecoration and upgrades of the kitchen, while an unchanging Billy Joel looks on in the background.

Though the lyrics are rapid-fire with several people and events mentioned in a single word each, there is widespread agreement on the meaning of the lyrics. Steven Ettinger wrote,

Billy Joel captured the major images, events, and personalities of this half-century in a three-minute song.... It was pure information overload, a song that assumed we knew exactly what he was singing about...What was truly alarming was the realization that we, the listeners, for the most part understood the references.

The following events (with Joel's lyric for each appearing in bold) are listed in the order that they appear in the song, which is almost entirely chronological. The lyric for each individual event is brief and the events are punctuated by the chorus and other lyrical elements. The following list includes longer, more descriptive names for clarity. Events from a variety of contexts – such as popular entertainment, foreign affairs, and sports – are intermingled, giving an impression of the culture of the time as a whole. There are 118 events listed in the song.

1940s

1948

• Harry Truman wins the presidential election following a partial term after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• Doris Day debuts in film in Romance on the High Seas, featuring the popular song "It's Magic".

1949

• Red China: The Communist Party of China wins the Chinese Civil War, establishing the People's Republic of China.
• Johnnie Ray: The rock and roll progenitor signs his first recording contract with Okeh Records.
• South Pacific, the award-winning musical, opens on Broadway.
• Walter Winchell, an influential radio and newspaper journalist, begins to denounce Communism as the main threat facing America.
• Joe DiMaggio signs a record-breaking $100,000 contract with the New York Yankees.

1950s

1950

• Joe McCarthy, a U.S. Senator, gains national attention and begins his anti-Communism crusade with his Lincoln Day speech.
• Richard Nixon is first elected to the United States Senate.
• Studebaker, a popular automobile company, begins its financial downfall.
• Television becomes widespread throughout Europe and North America.
• North Korea invades South Korea, beginning the Korean War.
• Marilyn Monroe appears in five films, including The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve.

1951

• The Rosenbergs, married couple Ethel and Julius, are convicted of espionage.
• H-Bomb: The United States is developing the hydrogen bomb as a nuclear weapon.
• Sugar Ray Robinson, a champion boxer, defeats Jake LaMotta in the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre".
• Panmunjom, a border village in Korea, is the location of truce talks between the parties of the Korean War.
• Marlon Brando is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire.
• The King and I, the musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, opens on Broadway.
• The Catcher in the Rye, a controversial novel by J. D. Salinger, is published.

1952

• Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected as President of the United States in a landslide.
• Vaccine for polio is successfully developed by Jonas Salk.
• England's got a new queen: Princess Elizabeth succeeds to the throne as Queen Elizabeth II and is crowned the following year.
• Rocky Marciano defeats Jersey Joe Walcott, becoming the world heavyweight boxing champion.
• Liberace first broadcasts The Liberace Show.
• Santayana goodbye: George Santayana, philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist, dies.

1953

• Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, dies.
• Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Stalin for six months.
• Gamal Abdel Nasser acts as the true power behind the new Egyptian nation as Muhammad Naguib's minister of the interior.
• Sergei Prokofiev, a popular Russian composer, dies.
• Winthrop Rockefeller and his wife Barbara are involved in a highly publicized divorce.
• Roy Campanella, a baseball catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, receives the National League's Most Valuable Player award for the second time.
• Communist bloc: The East German uprising of 1953 is crushed by the Volkspolizei and the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany.

1954

• Roy Cohn resigns as Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel and enters private practice.
• Juan Perón is at the height of his power as President of Argentina before a coup the following year.
• Arturo Toscanini is at the height of his fame as a conductor, performing regularly with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on U.S. national radio.
• Dacron is an early artificial fiber made from the same plastic as polyester.
• Dien Bien Phu falls: The fall of this French/Vietnamese camp to Việt Minh forces leads to the creation of North Vietnam and South Vietnam as separate states.
• "Rock Around the Clock" is a hit single released by Bill Haley & His Comets.

1955

• Albert Einstein dies at the age of 76.
• James Dean achieves success with East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, but dies in a car accident at the age of 24.
• Brooklyn's got a winning team: The Brooklyn Dodgers win their first and only World Series before their move to Los Angeles.
• Davy Crockett, a Disney television miniseries about the legendary frontiersman, was a huge hit and inspired a short-lived "coonskin cap" craze.
• Peter Pan, recently featured in a Disney animated feature, is also the subject of a stage musical starring Mary Martin, broadcast on NBC live and in color.
• Elvis Presley signs with RCA Records on November 21, beginning his pop career, going on to earn a reputation as the "King of Rock and Roll".
• Disneyland opens as Walt Disney's first theme park.

1956

• Brigitte Bardot appears in her first mainstream film And God Created Woman and establishes an international reputation as a French "sex kitten".
• Budapest, is the site of the Hungarian Revolution.
• Alabama is the site of the Montgomery bus boycott, one of the pivotal events in the civil rights movement.
• Nikita Khrushchev makes his famous Secret Speech denouncing Stalin's "cult of personality".
• Princess Grace Kelly appears in her last film High Society, and marries Prince Rainier III of Monaco.
• Peyton Place, the best-selling socially scandalous novel by Grace Metalious, is published.
• Trouble in the Suez: The Suez Crisis increases as Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal.

1957

• Little Rock, Arkansas is the site of a standoff between Governor Orval Faubus and President Eisenhower over the Little Rock Nine attending a previously whites-only high school.
• Boris Pasternak, the Russian author, publishes his novel Doctor Zhivago.
• Mickey Mantle is in the middle of his career as a famous New York Yankees outfielder and American League All-Star for the sixth year in a row.
• Jack Kerouac publishes his novel On the Road, a defining work of the Beat Generation.
• Sputnik becomes the first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union, marking the start of the space race.
• Chou En-Lai, Premier of the People's Republic of China, survives an assassination attempt.
• The Bridge on the River Kwai is released, and receives seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

1958

• Lebanon is engulfed in a political and religious crisis that eventually involves U.S. intervention.
• Charles de Gaulle is elected first president of the French Fifth Republic following the Algerian Crisis.
• California baseball begins as the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants move to California.
• Starkweather homicide: Charles Starkweather killed eleven people, mostly in Lincoln, Nebraska.
• Children of Thalidomide: Many pregnant women taking the drug Thalidomide had children born with congenital birth defects.

1959

• Buddy Holly dies in a plane crash with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. Joel prefaces the lyric with a Holly signature vocal hiccup: "Uh-huh, uh-huh."
• Ben-Hur starring Charlton Heston, wins eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
• Space Monkey: A rhesus macaque and a squirrel monkey become the first two animals to be launched by NASA into space and survive.
• Mafia leaders are convicted in the Apalachin meeting trial, confirming it as a nationwide conspiracy.
• Hula hoops sales reach 100 million as the latest toy fad.
• Fidel Castro comes to power after a revolution in Cuba.
• Edsel is a no-go: Production of this much-advertised car marque ends after only three years due to poor sales.

1960s

1960

• An American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union, causing the U-2 Crisis of 1960.
• Syngman Rhee is rescued by the CIA after being forced to resign as leader of South Korea.
• Payola, illegal payments for radio broadcasting of songs, are publicized by Dick Clark's testimony before Congress and Alan Freed's public disgrace.
• Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy beats Vice President Richard Nixon in a presidential election.
• Chubby Checker popularizes the dance The Twist with his cover of the song of the same name.
• Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho becomes a landmark in graphic violence and cinema sensationalism. The screeching violins heard at this point in the song are a trademark of the film's soundtrack.
• Belgians in the Congo: The Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville) was declared independent of Belgium.

1961

• Ernest Hemingway commits suicide after a long battle with depression.
• Adolf Eichmann, a "most wanted" Nazi war criminal, is convicted in Israel for crimes against humanity during World War II.
• Stranger in a Strange Land, written by Robert A. Heinlein, is a breakthrough best-seller with themes of sexual freedom and liberation.
• Bob Dylan is signed to Columbia Records after a New York Times review by critic Robert Shelton.
• Berlin's separation into West Berlin and East Berlin is cemented when the Berlin Wall is erected.
• The Bay of Pigs Invasion, an attempt by United States-trained Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro, fails.

1962

• Academy Award-winning film Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O'Toole, premiered.
• British Beatlemania: The Beatles become the world's most famous rock band.
• Ole Miss: Southern segregationists rioted over the enrollment of black student James Meredith at the University of Mississippi.
• John Glenn flew the first American manned orbital mission termed "Friendship 7".
• Liston beats Patterson: Sonny Liston knocks out rarely defeated Floyd Patterson in the first round of the world heavyweight boxing championship.

1963

• Cardinal Giovanni Montini is elected to the papacy and takes the papal name of Pope Paul VI.
• Malcolm X incites controversy, including his statement that "the chickens have come home to roost" about John F. Kennedy's assassination.
• British politician sex: British Secretary of State for War John Profumo has a scandalous sexual relationship with showgirl Christine Keeler.
• JFK blown away: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated.

1965

• Birth control: Griswold v. Connecticut challenges a Connecticut law prohibiting contraceptives.
• Ho Chi Minh: Operation Rolling Thunder begins, with the first U.S. combat troops deployed in South Vietnam in opposition to North Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh.

1968

• Richard Nixon back again: After losing to Kennedy in 1960, former Vice President Nixon is elected President in 1968.

1969

• Moonshot: Apollo 11 becomes the first successful human landing on the Moon.
• Woodstock music festival attracts 400,000, as a touchstone of the counterculture movement.

1970s

1972–1975

• Watergate: The Republican burglary of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office complex leads to the resignation of President Nixon.
• Punk rock: Raucous bands such as The Ramones and the Sex Pistols are founded.

1976–1977

(Note: an item from 1976 is put between items from 1977 to make the song scan better.)

• Menachem Begin becomes Prime Minister of Israel and negotiates the Camp David Accords with Egypt's president.
• Former California Governor Ronald Reagan begins a presidential campaign in 1976, and is elected in 1980.
• Palestine: The ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict escalates as Israelis establish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
• Terror on the airline: Numerous aircraft hijackings take place, including an Air France flight diverted to Uganda, where the plane was stormed in Operation Entebbe.

1979

• Ayatollahs in Iran: The Iranian Revolution replaces secular Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi with Islamic rule by ayatollahs led by former exile Ruhollah Khomeini.
• Russians in Afghanistan: The Soviet Union deploys its army into Afghanistan, beginning a decade-long war.

1980s

1981–1982

• The television game show Wheel of Fortune hires Pat Sajak and Vanna White before becoming widely popular in syndication.

1983

• Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space by flying aboard Challenger on the STS-7 shuttle mission.
• Heavy metal suicide: Heavy metal songs such as "Suicide Solution" and "Better By You, Better Than Me" are blamed by the families of fans who committed suicide.
• Foreign debts: Persistent trade and budget deficits lead to numerous counties defaulting on their debts.
• Homeless vets: Veterans of the Vietnam War, including many disabled in the service, are becoming homeless and impoverished.
• AIDS: The immunodeficiency disease caused by HIV emerges as a pandemic.

1984

• Crack cocaine became a widely used form of the drug in impoverished inner cities.
• Bernie Goetz shoots four young black men he claimed were trying to mug him on a New York City subway, but is cleared of attempted murder charges.

1988

• Hypodermics on the shore: Medical waste was found washed up on the beaches of Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut after being illegally dumped at sea.

1989

• China's under martial law: China declares martial law, resulting in the use of military forces against protesting students to end the Tiananmen protests.
• Rock-and-roller cola wars: Soft drink giants Coke and Pepsi each run marketing campaigns using rock & roll and popular music stars.

Billy Joel "A Matter Of Trust (Single & Video)"

"A Matter of Trust" is a song by Billy Joel, released on July 9, 1986, as the second single from his album The Bridge.

The song was the second top 10 single from the album, after the previous single "Modern Woman". The song gained major traction in the Soviet Union as part of a state-sponsored television promotion of Joel's songs in preparation for his 1987 USSR concerts, recorded on Kontsert.

The song's music video, directed by Russell Mulcahy and produced and conceived by Paul Flattery, features Joel and his band performing in the basement of a building on St. Mark's Place in New York City's East Village, and also features shots of various people in the city who eventually gather round the building's windows to see Joel perform. Most appear to be enjoying the concert except one woman on a fire escape who yells at them to "shut up!" However, she is ignored, and even members of the NYPD do not mind. His then wife Christie Brinkley appears in the video holding their baby daughter Alexa. The song differs from most Joel songs in that it is based on electric guitar rather than piano, which gives it a hard rock edge compared to his usual soft rock balladry. It is the only Joel music video that features him on guitar - a factor he cited for saying it was his favorite of all his videos. Both Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney appear very briefly in the video; Starr is standing in the street outside a window, and McCartney leaning against a wall. 

During the 2020 presidential cycle and COVID-19 pandemic, CNN broadcast commercials promoting the importance of trust and which featured "A Matter of Trust" as background music. CNN states in an email: "This version's stripped-down instrumentals set against the black and white images create space to pause and reflect on this year's chaotic news cycles, and offer hope for how we can grow better together from these unprecedented times.”

Billy Joel "The Longest Time (Single & Video)"

"The Longest Time" is a doo-wop song by Billy Joel, released in 1984 as the fourth single from the 1983 album An Innocent Man. Following the theme of the album in paying tribute to Joel's musical influences, the song is presented in the style of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. It reached number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. In the United Kingdom the song reached number 25 on the UK Singles Chart.

The song features Joel on lead vocals, all backing vocals, and percussive sounds such as finger snaps and hand claps. The only two instruments in the song are a bass guitar and a snare drum being played with brushes. When the song is covered by vocal groups, the bass part is typically sung. Phil Ramone and Joel had intended to feature a vocal group but Joel recorded each of the parts himself.

The music video starts with a man (played by Joel) in a gym after his 25th high school reunion party. Looking around at posters of several class awards, he breaks into song as his band, apparently portrayed as his high school friends, enters the gym. As they sing, they alternate between their high school and current selves, ending with their high school selves walking out of the restroom and interacting with a puzzled janitor. The video was entirely filmed at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and was directed by Jay Dubin.

Billy Joel "You Maybe Right (Single & Video)"

"You May Be Right" is a single written and performed by rock singer Billy Joel from his 1980 album Glass Houses. The song reached #7 on the US charts and #6 in Canada. It failed to chart, however, in the UK. This is unlike his preceding and succeeding singles "All for Leyna" (UK #40) and "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" (UK #14). The Japanese single features "Close to the Borderline" as a B-side.

"You May Be Right" can also be found on disc 2 of Billy Joel's Greatest Hits - Volumes I and II and Live at Shea Stadium: The Concert albums. The song begins with the sound of broken glass.

The video version differs from the album version. The most notable difference is the intro, where the sound of broken glass is replaced with "one, two, one, two, three, four".

Billy Joel "It's Still Rock And Roll To Me (Single & Video)"

"It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" is a 1980 song written and performed by Billy Joel, from the hit album Glass Houses. The song was number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts for two weeks, from July 19 through August 1, 1980. The song spent 11 weeks in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 and was the 7th biggest hit of 1980 according to American Top 40. The song is an examination of the themes of a musician's declining fame and changing public tastes that were expressed in his 1975 hit "The Entertainer". According to drummer Liberty DeVitto in an interview, the sound engineer for the song had him tune his snare drum extremely low so that it would "flop" when he played it.

The single eventually reached Platinum status from the RIAA for sales of over 1 million copies in the United States. Pop rock musician Drake Bell covered the song in 2014 on his rockabilly album Ready Steady Go!.

In review made a week later after single release, Billboard editors noticed the laconicism of backing support and Joel's vocal that made the song sparkling.

A music video for the song was made, showing Joel performing the song live with his band. According to his band members, the song vocals were performed live by Joel during the video's filming.

Bee Gees "Timeless: The All-Time Greatest Hits"

Timeless: The All-Time Greatest Hits is a compilation album by the Bee Gees. It was released on 21 April 2017 by Capitol Records to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The album is a single-disc compilation of the group's biggest hits selected by the group's last surviving member, Barry Gibb. Gibb said of the compilation: "Although there are many other songs, these songs, I feel, are the songs that Maurice, Robin, and I would be most proud of."

The album is a career spanning compilation featuring 21 tracks selected by Barry Gibb that ranges from their first Australian hit, "Spicks and Specks", to the group's international number one single, "You Win Again". Several hits are omitted, including "Holiday", "Run to Me", "Love So Right", "One" and "World".

Track listing

All compositions by Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb, except as indicated.

1. "Spicks and Specks" Barry Gibb Spicks and Specks, 1966 2:51
2. "New York Mining Disaster 1941" Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb Bee Gees 1st, 1967 2:10
3. "To Love Somebody" Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb Bee Gees 1st, 1967 3:00
4. "Massachusetts" Horizontal, 1967 2:22
5. "Words" A-side Single, 1968 3:17
6. "I've Gotta Get a Message to You" Idea, 1968 3:04
7. "I Started a Joke" Idea, 1968 3:17
8. "Lonely Days" 2 Years On, 1970 3:47
9. "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb Trafalgar, 1971 3:38
10. "Jive Talkin'" Main Course, 1975 3:44
11. "Nights on Broadway" Main Course, 1975 4:33
12. "Fanny (Be Tender with My Love)" Main Course, 1975 4:04
13. "You Should Be Dancing" Children of the World, 1976 4:16
14. "How Deep Is Your Love" Saturday Night Fever, 1977 4:02
15. "Stayin' Alive" Saturday Night Fever, 1977 4:43
16. "Night Fever" Saturday Night Fever, 1977 3:32
17. "More Than a Woman" Saturday Night Fever, 1977 3:17
18. "Too Much Heaven" Spirits Having Flown, 1979 4:54
19. "Tragedy" Spirits Having Flown, 1979 5:02
20. "Love You Inside Out" Spirits Having Flown, 1979 4:10
21. "You Win Again" E.S.P., 1987 4:10