This song is one of my top 5 favorite lyrics from Billy Joel.  I also really love the groove, but it's the words that win me over the most on this one.  It was the final track on the multi-platinum smash 1983 album, "An Innocent Man", and was a top 20 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #18, but did fare better on the US Adult Contemporary chart, climbing to #3.

To fully appreciate this song, you have to know what was happening in Billy's life at the time, and understand the album that it was featured on.  He got a divorce form his first wife in 1982, having been with her prior to breaking out successfully as a major recording artist.  As such, he found himself single.....and a ROCK STAR!  He couldn't believe his good fortune, and the long queue of desirable dating options suddenly available to him.  He started dating a variety of beautiful women, including some supermodels.  He recalled in an interview that the experience made him feel like a kid again, and he started writing music reminiscent of his youth in the late 50s and early 60s.  Every song from "An Innocent Man" is specifically inspired by a particular band or artist from that era, and when you know who it is, you can close your eyes and hear the connective tissue easily.  In this case, it was an homage to "Clean Up Woman" by Betty Wright.

Other songs on the album were patterned in the styles of James Brown, the Four Seasons, Lil Anthony & the Imperials, the Drifters, Sam Cooke, Little Richard, and the Supremes to name a few.  Therefore, the lyrics to this wrap-up song for the album are essentially an autobiographical nod to his youth, growing up on Long Island and hanging out with the "wild boys", and falling in love with the Rock and Roll and Soul/R&B music they were listening to at the time.  And oh boy, are the lyrics descriptive and vivid.  

Passages such as:

We wore matador boots
Only Flag Brothers had them with a Cuban Heel
Iridescent socks with the same colored shirt
And a tight pair of chinos
I put on my shark skin jacket
You know the kind with the velvet collar
And ditty-bop shades, oh yeah

Talk about painting a picture!  As a songwriter myself, I get excited every single time I hear that stanza, even though I've heard it now at least 500 times.  It's a truly brilliant piece of writing.  The hardest thing about writing great lyrics, especially if you like to tell stories with them, is that you have 3 - 5 minutes to get your point across with feeling, and hopefully provoking some imagery in the listener's mind.  This is one of the best examples I could cite by any writer in the 20th century of hitting the lyrical bullseye.

I've seen Billy Joel 11 times in concert now, and I've only caught this song once, but I was beyond thrilled that it was included.  It has a very infectious groove and presents itself fantastically live.  I will always hold this one up as a "gold standard" to measure by when I write lyrics.....I'll fall short more times than I would like, but I'm grateful to have it out there to inspire me to be more clever, more descriptive, and less ordinary. 

Enjoy my cover of this song from a livestream show I did on July 22, 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and then check out Billy Joel performing it in on NBC's "Today Show" in December of 2005 (I saw him perform this in Las Vegas just a few months later on April 8 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena).  Oh, and after that, check out Betty Wright's "Clean Up Girl", the song that inspired "Keeping the Faith"!

If you'd like to explore my piano method more deeply, my best students use my video courses and join me for conversation and twice monthly Q&A Livestreams in my private community...you can find it all HERE. Thanks.

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