Slower Dancing Songs: Don’t Ask Me Why

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Hey, it’s a Jim Reeves song! Oh, wait, wrong song. True story time, and it is germane to this song: country music singer/songwriter legend Bill Anderson mentioned in his autobiography that he, somehow, got a royalty check for the song “My Life,” written by today’s artist, that was mistaken for his song “My Life (Throw It Away If I Want To).” Different titles, different publishers (BMI vs. ASCAP), different decades, but there we were! So, with that in mind, here’s today’s more mellow song to celebrate giving @rebelann a break from dancing too much and too hard. Don’t Ask Me Why - Billy Joel At least they both have Bill in their name. Yes, there’s a Jim Reeves song called “Don’t Ask Me Why,” but, to quote Reeves himself on his live album, “that ain’t it.” In the 70s, there was a disease running rampant in music: performers had a marvelous, zillion-selling album, then the follow-up wasn’t that good, then the follow-up to that was almost horrible. Some people (like Peter Frampton) skipped the middle portion and went from great to woeful in one album (from Frampton Comes Alive to I’m in You, an album so weak that most people can’t name it as the follow-up to that mega-selling breakthrough album). Some, like Boz Scaggs, took a big step down (from Silk Degrees to Down Two Then Left), and some seemed interested in making “big hit record, part two” (like Bob Seger’s Stranger in Town, that was so much like Night Moves that it had similar graphics, photo, and song arrangement). Billy Joel’s massive breakthrough was The Stranger. He followed it with 52nd Street, which, like the Seger album, seemed to be more of a “let’s make something almost identical to The Stranger and see how it sells.” Then came Glass Houses. Ick. Weird Al, who’s usually not into taking personal pot shots at singers, skewered Joel for this album with his brilliant but unreleased (because it is a pretty sharp dig) “It’s Still Billy Joel to Me.” Yankovic hit the nail on the head: “after listening to a couple of albums well, they all start to sound the same…it’s a big hit, isn’t it, even if it’s a piece of JUNK, it’s still Billy Joel to me.” Even though I considered myself a Billy Joel fan (still do), Glass Houses almost made me give up on him. (He rebounded wonderfully with The Nylon Curtain and An Innocent Man, so I can forgive and forget: forgive him for this album and forget most of the yuck on it. ) This song was, is, and ever shall be a notable exception. While I found nearly all of this album weak by anyone’s standards (I think it was Rolling Stone who reviewed it by saying, “The songs are catchy, but then again, so’s the flu” ), the Latin beat of this song set it apart from everything else on the record (that seemed like a forced, lame attempt at new wave…you know, like Pat Boone trying to do heavy metal ). It’s the only song from this album I’ll still listen to. And it’s a pleasant, gentle sway song, not a hard-edged rocker. Not to mention that, after “C’est Si Bon,” it gives us our SECOND French lesson (“now you parlez-vous français“) in the countdown!! Don’t Ask Me Why Written by Billy Joel Recorded by Billy Joel From Glass Houses, 1980 You can say the human heart is only make believe: