Songoftheday 7/26/13 - If you said goodbye to me tonight, there would still be music left to write...

Billy Joel - "The Longest Time"
from the album An Innocent Man (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #14 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 11

Today's Song of the Day is by Billy Joel, whose retro-pop opus An Innocent Man was proving to be the biggest of his career, and had already spun off three top-10 pop hits with "Tell Her About It", "Uptown Girl", and the title track. For his fourth release from the album he went really old-school with the a-capella number "The Longest Time". Written by Billy and produced by Phil Ramone, the record actually uses his voice overdubbed 14 times, unlike the video which has his band members miming the harmony parts as old schoolmates of his....

"The Longest Time" topped the Adult-Contemporary (easy listening) chart and went top-20 pop in May of 1984. The single also reached the top-40 in Canada, Australia and Britain as well.

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Now to hear the band and Joel harmonize for real, here's their live take on the song...

Other acts that have tackled the song include rock band Yellowcard...

Alt-rap act Das EFX incorporated the song quite nicely in their "Diggy Das" song in 2003...(NSFW)

Here's one of my favorite collegiate acapella groups, On The Rocks, doing it in 2009...


 British vocal group the Overtones did a nice cover on their top-10 album Good Ol' Fashioned Love in 2011..

This year, even Glee couldn't keep from covering this acapella classic, though it's way beyond their sales heyday to make the chart..

Up tomorrow: From Flash to Break - a Famous singer grabs on to a fad.