In The Number Fortys, we review every song that was sitting at #40 on the Billboard chats, starting in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either).
Sometimes you meet a song on its way back down the charts. By the end of January 1984, Uptown Girl had been places. It had seen some shit. It had gone all the way to #3, and had been on the chart now for over four months. As a song, Uptown Girl was the definition of a genre exercise, the genre in this case being Franki Valli and the Four Seasons. It's the kind of song that probably meant something to a lot of people (esp. people in the mid-Atlantic states) at the time, but it doesn't sound like it meant very much to Joel.
Which, you know, maybe it did. That is his future wife in the video after all, a statuesque model named Christie Brinkley. But even if the song reflects aspects of their relationship (she's a fashionable lady, he's kinda of a schlup-y guy), Joel's too much of a professional, too much of a pop craftsman, to put too much of himself into the song. The album Uptown Girl's taken from, An Innocent Man, was a blockbuster. It came on the heels of The Nylon Curtain, an album that, according to a Joel biography that I distractedly looked through for 20 minutes one time in my local library, Joel considered his masterpiece. His attempt to say something profound about the alienation of modern life, They Nylon Curtain featured the song Pressure, which I like a lot, especially the crazy circle-of-fourths pre-chorus where the drummer comes in late. But Pressure only reached #20, a stiff by Joel's standards. Anyway, it gets an 8.
The Nylon Curtain, to date, has sold 5 million fewer copies than the Joel album that came before it, and 5 million fewer than the album that came after it. Joel wasn't in a place to fuck around, commercially speaking, and An Innocent Man delivered the chart goods. Three Top 10s, Four Top 20s. Assuming he ever paused at #40 on his way up and down the charts, it's likely we'll see Joel again.
Let's take a moment to appreciate the craft though--the impeccable background vocals, the opening drum fill, even those last four words of the chorus, that's what I am, how the matter-of-factness of the melody matches the matter-of-factness of the lyrics. Every part of Uptown Girl is a hook. There's hardly any instruments at all besides drums and vocals (and motorcycle engines, apparently).
As a child, I heard the last line of the second chorus as She's got her toys, and had always assumed that's what it was--even into adulthood, as I wondered if Joel was slipping in some masturbatory innuendo. Just now I'm realizing he's probably singing choice. That's, um, disappointing.
That video. You have to love the time-space anachronism postmodern who-give-a-fuckness of putting 50's mechanic greaseballs in the same video as 80's breakdaners. Do you? Don't you? I guess you do, right? By the way, most of Joel's dancing involves walking from one place to another on the beat, that is when he's not being rolled from one place to another on a jack.
THE NUMBER ONE
Yes - Owner of a Lonely Heart
Produced by Trevor Horn just before he fell in with the Art of Noise and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The song has cutting-edge samples which kick all kinds of ass on headphones, and features a video that was, in the MTV of its era, like putting a Kafka novel in with my kid's Paw Patrol books. The song's not much more than tepid UK art-rock though. It's a 5.
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