Uptown Girl by the Bodegas and the Lights on Upper Broadway

If you've ever loved Joel's self-deprecating anthem, give Simon's contemplative track a chance.

It’s an overcast Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn Heights. I am standing in the checkout line of a gourmet grocer with one black and white cookie and an Ito En unsweetened Green Tea. I am surrounded by tall-stacked cakes, bowtie pasta salads, and the cascading sounds of Paul Simon’s voice, backed sweetly by the voices of the South African Choir, Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

“She’s a rich girl, she don’t try to hide it, diamonds on the soles of her shoes”.

It takes an agonizingly long time for me to find a suitable subway up to Union Square. I backtrack and turn through Brooklyn Heights trying to find the blue line, eventually settling for orange. Being somewhat permanently back in NYC after four and a half long years of self-imposed exile, I’m running a diet averaging easily one slices of pizza every other day. Time for my late afternoon fix. I stop by Joe’s on 14th street and roaring above the sounds in my own headphones are Billy Joel’s strong and soaring vocals.

“And when she knows what she wants, from her ti-yi-yime”.

“Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” (Diamonds) and “Uptown Girl” describe incredibly similar, if not identical, phenomena. The poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks finally gets his shot at the rich, high-society girl. Simon and Joel spend the tunes overthinking and obsessing over their fantasies. By the end, one has come to terms with squandering it, replaying the parts where it all went right, and wrong, in his brain. The other can’t stop imagining that he will eventually do the same.

“Uptown Girl” is ostensibly about Christie Brinkley. If you polled ten people, at least nine would recognize the song and half of them would tell you they know what it’s about. It is poppy, catchy, and digestible. The song is more consciously about Joel himself. It teems with the insecurities and of a man who, even after getting exactly what he wants, lacks the confidence to hold on. It makes the Frankie-Vallian style of the track that much more compelling.

Where the Four Seasons’ swaggering tri-state style manifested in sincere bravado and machismo, Billy Joel flips the narrative. He plays the coy, scared boy in a brave new uptown world. He drops precisely none of the performative dimension in the singing and composition. Instead, he pours that energy directly into the lyrics. He belittles himself when he sings, “she’ll say I’m not so tough”, helping us identify in his sensitivity. But he follows it directly by losing the plot, “just because, I’m in love with an Uptown Girl.” So, you’re not that tough, but that’s just as recent as your uptown relationship? The timeline doesn’t add up Bill!

I could go on and on…and on, but the lyrics are drab and bland. Each verse retreads the same themes. Never wading into the passage of time or developments, personally or interpersonally. For me, he loses any tastefulness you could possibly wring out of a track that includes high pitched squealing and decidedly passé genre experimentation with songwriting about as lazy as Billy Joel has in his massive, decades-spanning catalogue.

Contrast with the songwriting of our other diminutive, curmudgeon, New Yorker, Paul Simon. “Diamonds”, another intimate relationship tune, starts from the third person. Simon introduces us to the rich girl, “she got diamonds on the soles of her shoes”, and the poor boy “empty as a pocket, with nothing to lose.” As the song shifts to first person, zooming in, it could easily be about Simon. However, where Joel derives populism from invitation to sing along, Simon opts for lyrical specificity and melodic obscurity. A night drunkenly causing mischief on “upper Broadway” gives a near 1:1 match in setting to “Uptown Girl”. But we are only afforded this window after you’ve living this entire relationship. From being enamored, “well that’s one way to lose these walking blues,” to taking her for granted, “she slipped into my pocket with my car keys,” all the way to speaking past each other, Simon paints an end-to-end portrait of the relationship.

“As if everybody here would know exactly what I was talking about.”

Indeed.

In stark opposition to “Uptown Girl”, the song is nearly impossible to sing along to on the first few listens. It twists and turns, defying conventional American folk-rock melody. In place of Joel’s local heroes, Simon finds inspiration halfway around the globe. In place of anticipation, he finds closure. And somehow, '“Diamonds” is equally as impossible to erase from memory as “Uptown Girl”. Sooner, rather than later, it worms into my brain, possessing me with its croons and horns.

As I leave the slice shop and the sounds of Billy Joel behind, my headphones come back into my aural focus. My fingers find track five on Graceland. I’m glad to be back in New York.

Ps - if you get to “Diamonds” through the album Graceland, leave it running. Go crazy.