| Only the Good Die Young |
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A young man dares to attempt to seduce a catholic girl using the angle that it won’t pay to be good and that in time she will eventually give in to someone, so to let it be him. He teases her but in the end she still refuses him. Despite having a cheerful rhythm it was never a very popular song lingering in the lower ends of the charts when it was released in 1977. But all it needed was to be heard by a radio station at a catholic university in New Jersey and the song was banned. All of this negative publicity had the younger generation pouring into record stores to see what all the fuss was about sending the single spiraling into the upper end of the charts. Joel says that it was a simple song where the girl retained her innocence and although he felt there was no need to get upset over it he did make an official request to the authorities that had originally banned the song to please ban his very next album. The girl Virginia in the song was Virginia Callaghan, a girl from Joel’s boyhood, who he had had a crush on. He says Virginia never noticed him until he performed his first gig with a band at a local church in 1964. He noticed that not only was Virginia staring at him but so were many other girls. He says that girls was his initial reason for getting involved in music and by the end of the show the priest handed each member of the band a small packet of cash. Joel says that he realized this was the life, girls and money! And thirteen years later he was able to use this inspiration in this lively track. This number was originally recorded with a reggae beat which was changed by Joel because his drummer at the time, De Vito didn’t like it. Despite not liking it, it was De Vito that leaked the initial version by mistake. Joel described in an interview his opinion on Catholicism, saying it had an extreme focus on sin, adding that has gothic influences with visions of incense and bells. He said he just wanted to write a song about it. |