Songoftheday 10/9/12 - Well our father fought the second world war, spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore...

Billy Joel - "Allentown"
from the album The Nylon Curtain (1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #17 (six weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 16

Today's Song of the Day is by piano man Billy Joel, who released his most serious album, The Nylon Curtain, in 1982, with the first single "Pressure" making the top-20 in the fall of that year. He briefly toured, and the show in Long Island was broadcast on fledgling cable network HBO (I remember being glued to the TV for it).

The second track released to radio, "Allentown" was more upbeat in instrumentation, but just as depressing a subject, as it tackled the death of manufacturing/mining towns across America by using the example of the Pennsylvania blue-collar town mortally tied to the Bethlehem Steel plant, which weren't keeping up with modernization and laying off hundreds of workers. In fact, its a harbinger of the entire American ecomony, as cheap labor and easy unsafe lack of regulations overseas threw us into a serviced goods nation. Like the rest of the album, it was written by Joel and produced by Phil Ramone.

Thumbs up for unexpected butt shots!

"Allentown" was Billy's biggest hit from the set, spending four months in the top-40, and made the top-20 on both the pop and adult-contemporary (soft-rock) chart, placed on the rock radio list, and made the top-40 in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Billy was also given the key to the city of Allentown by the mayor for the classic anthem that's a true working-man's song in the tradition of Springsteen and Mellencamp.What I love the most of the song is its realism, no pussyfooting the generations of forgotten men and women who strove just to make a life for their families, as opposed to these times where the "small business owner" gets kissed in the ass like a deity.

(Click below to read the rest of the post)


Here's Billy in concert with the song...

Up tomorrow: a ramblin gamblin man goes to the country.