In March 2012, Billy Joel’s YouTube channel upload the audio of the track, which currently 6.5 million views and over 82 thousand likes.Ĭhart Rankings: “Vienna” failed to reach the mainstream charts, but the song does have 109 million global streams on Spotify. And some composers, Dvořák, Smetana – they captured it.”Ī music video was never released for “Vienna”. Vienna is fairly popular on Spotify, being rated between 10-65 popularity. Vienna has a BPM/tempo of 125 beats per minute, is in the key of A Maj and has a duration of 3 minutes, 34 seconds. It is track number 4 in the album 50 Years of the Piano Man. So this whole thing is going on in middle Europe – it’s Kurt Weill. Vienna is a song by Billy Joel, released on. This century started out with this Assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo and that begat World War I which begat the Russian Revolution, then you had the Depression then that begat World War II and then that begat the Cold War and all that’s over but they’re still blowing each other to smithereens in Sarajevo. We are seeing the result of it in this ethnic warfare in the Balkans which is a tragedy. That kind of sick, middle-European, kinky decadent thing. The beginning and the end is very Kurt Weill. I thought “Vienna waits for you…There is also a lot of inside stuff on the song. In a lot of these older places in the world, they value their older people and their older people feel they can still be a part of the community and I thought ‘This is a terrific idea – that old people are useful -and that means I don’t have to worry so much about getting old because I can still have a use in this world in my old age. Track: Drums Revised on: Play along with official audio SPEED 100 E B G D A E Intro 125 4 4 Verse 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. We put them in rest homes, we kinda kick them under the rug and make believe they don’t exist. We treat old people in this country pretty badly. I say to my father “What’s this nice old lady doing sweeping the street?” He says “She’s got a job, she feels useful, she’s happy, she’s making the street clean, she’s not put out to pasture”. She must have been about 90 years old and she is sweeping the street. So I go to visit my father in Vienna, I’m walking around this town and I see this old lady. It was a place where cultures co-mingled. You get great beer in Vienna but you also get brandy from Armenia. It’s a place of inter…course, of exchange – it’s the place where cultures co-mingle. So the metaphor of Vienna has the meaning of a crossroad. During the Cold War, between the Eastern Bloc, the Warsaw Pact nations and the NATO countries was the city of Vienna… Vienna was always the crossroads – between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. He lives in Vienna, Austria which I thought was rather bizarre because he left Germany in the first place because of this guy named Hitler and he ends up going to the same place that Hitler hung out all those years! Vienna, for a long time was the crossroads. I didn’t see him from the time I was 8 ‘till I was about 23-24 years old. “Why did I pick Vienna to use as a metaphor for the rest of your life? My father lives in Vienna now. In an July 2008 New York Times article, Joel spoke about the track and how it was one of his two favourite songs (as well as “Summer, Highland Falls”): “Vienna” is a soft rock track about not being too quick to grow up and to enjoy your life while you can. The track was written by Joel and produced by Phil Ramone. “We were walking in the city and I remember seeing an old lady sweeping the street and I said, ‘Dad it’s kind of sad that that poor old woman has to do that kind of work.’ He said, ‘No, she has a job, she feels useful, she has a place in our society,’” Joel recalls.“Vienna” is the fifth track from American composer, singer and songwriter Billy Joel and his fifth studio album “The Stranger”, which was released in 1977. Soon after, during a walk around the city with him, Joel was struck with the inspiration for his song of the same name. Music Tim Grierson 1 year ago How Billy Joel’s ‘Vienna’ Went From a Deep Cut to His Most Popular Song An encounter with his estranged father inspired this 1977 track that was never a single. Upon hearing this news, Joel went to visit his estranged father in Vienna. When I did my first tour of Europe, I was in my early 20s, and I was looking for him… I got word that my father was working in an office in Vienna, Austria. “He went back to Europe and I pretty much never heard from the guy again,” Joel said in a 2008 interview. When Joel was a child, his father and mother split with Helmut, returning to Europe-Vienna, Austria to be specific. In this song, Joel’s perspective on getting older almost entirely stems from hearing his father’s take on aging. His father, born Helmut Joel in Germany (he later adopted the name Howard), was a pianist and businessman who felt out of place in the United States.
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