Well, "Movin' Out" is definitely a favorite of mine.  I always liked it, but it's among my list of songs that moved up many pegs after seeing it performed live.  I'll get into that, but let's start with the stats.  This is the opening track off Billy Joel's blockbuster breakout 1977 album, "The Stranger".  It was one of 4 hit singles off that RIAA Diamond Certified (10 Million+ Albums Sold) masterpiece.  It was a solid hit, but not a smash.  It climbed to  #17 on the US Billboard Hot 100, #11 in Canada, and cracked the top 40 in the UK & New Zealand.

There are two things I really want to share with you about this song, one personal, and one about how it was written...we'll start with the latter.  Billy Joel has a process that he usually follows when writing songs: write the music first, and then see what the music inspires him to express through a lyric and write words to match it.  As such, he wrote a piece of music (or so he thought), and was inspired to write this lyric about the working class ambition toward upward economic mobility (eg. "Working too hard can give you a heart attack", "Trading in a Chevy for a Cadillac", etc.).  

He brought what he wrote into the studio to play for the band and begin the process of finding parts so they could record it for his upcoming album, and after he concluded, his drummer, Liberty DeVitto, called him a derogatory name (I've heard the story more than once from Billy with "schmuck" being the nicest version, and a few others that I won't write down here), and pointed out, "That's not original, it's 'Laughter In the Rain' by Neil Sedaka!"

So...Billy did the thing all songwriters occasionally accidentally do, and plagiarized another song....but luckily they caught it before he recorded and released it LOL.  Billy's reaction was, "You mean I wrote all of these words for nothing?!"  So, angrily, he went about the business of writing a new melody to the lyrics he'd already pounded out.  What he came up with is the song we all know today, and frankly it's much better.  I'm a fan of "Laughter in the Rain" and Neil Sedaka, and you should absolutely check it out at the link I just provided....but the attitude of the melody Billy wrote on attempt #2 matches the lyric PERFECTLY.

As I mentioned, I always liked it from the first time I heard it on the radio (it would get occasional airplay on the Soft Rock/Adult Contemporary station we had in Ogallala, NE).  But, this song took on a new meaning with me on November 22, 1998, the first time I heard Billy perform it live.  Those opening quarter notes playing a descending octave on the crunchy guitar coming through the sound system in a 20,000 seat arena....just parted my hair.  It had a punch and a grit to it that I'd never picked up on from the studio recording, but after I returned home from the show, I could never NOT hear it no matter what version of the song I was listening to.  And the power he employed in his voice at his peak singing prowess during the final verse of the song reaching for higher notes on the lines, "You Can Pay Uncle Sam With the Overtime!", and "Yeah, If That's What You're All About".....my God, I still get goosebumps thinking about it more than 25 years later.  

I've literally been trying to recreate that moment every time I've performed it myself since that night.....it's one of the most vivid experiences I've ever had at a concert, and I've been to hundreds of concerts.  I've been to Billy in person 11 times now, and I've been very fortunate that "Movin' Out" has been in the set list for 10 of them.  That was something else that was kind of exciting that night....it was only the second time I'd had a chance to see him live, and it was the first time ever seeing him solo (the first show was totally epic, but with Elton John...so I knew I'd get a longer set this time since he wasn't sharing the time with another artist).  "Movin' Out" had been mostly inactive in his live sets since the end of 1982.  He'd had so many hit singles from the albums he released between 1983 - 1993 that he had to sacrifice some of the earlier material to make space for them, and "Movin' Out" had been one of the victims.  But by 1998, he was no longer touring to promote a new album....he was out because his legacy was firmly cemented and people just wanted to hear him play as much of his catalogue as he could squeeze into 2 1/2 hours. 

As such, some tunes that had been in the bullpen for over a decade came out of mothballs and back into the set.  So on top of just being such an awesome rendering that recalibrated my feelings about the song, it was also super exciting because I didn't expect to hear it at all.  I would rate that performance, the second song in the set on November 22, 1998 in Rosemont, IL at what was then called the Rosemont Horizon Arena, one of my top 5 all time concert moments, and it's left a special affection within me for "Movin Out" ever since (it's called the "Allstate Arena" now, but I'm really over arenas and stadiums changing names every 10 years because some corporation purchased the "rights" to it...enough already 🙄). 

Enjoy my cover of this song from a livestream show I did on July 26, 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and then check out Billy Joel performing it at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island in December of 1982.  Oh, and after that, check out Billy on VH1's "Storytellers" series in 1997 telling the story of accidentally copying "Laughter In the Rain", and having to do a rewrite for "Movin' Out" LOL!

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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If the video doesn't show above, use THIS LINK to see it on YouTube

If the video doesn't show above, use THIS LINK to see it on YouTube