Everyone gets songs stuck in their heads that just won’t go away. They sneak into your subconscious. They are epic earworms that you find yourself humming uncontrollably, singing in the shower, or tapping the beat to with your foot or ballpoint pen when you should be working. Sometimes they even keep you awake at night. Whether they are current hits, one-hit wonders, movie soundtrack gems, holiday favorites, or songs from your youth, their catchy vocals, riffs, hooks, and choruses seem to linger for days.
Here, those songs find a home, no matter the genre. Here, those epic earworms are revisited, explained, and celebrated. Here, you may find the song that haunts you tomorrow. Here is today’s unescapable song of the day…and the story behind it.
Today’s Epic Earworm: Billy Joel — “Uptown Girl”
Billy Joel was born in the Bronx and grew up on Long Island. After playing in a couple of short-lived bands, Joel figured out that he preferred going it alone. It did not take long for the singer and songwriter to hit it big as a solo act. His second album, 1973’s Piano Man, blew up, and Joel was suddenly thrust into stardom.
Fast forward to the 1980s, and Joel was a full-blown superstar. His 1983 album An Innocent Man produced five more Top 20 singles, including the smash hit “Uptown Girl.” The epic earworm about a working-class downtown man trying to woo a sophisticated uptown girl who was out of his league sold over six million copies. The video depicted Joel, playing a lowly auto mechanic, trying to land a high-class socialite played by his real-life girlfriend at the time, supermodel Christie Brinkley. Everyone assumes that the song was written about Brinkley, who Joel was married to from 1985 to 1994, but it wasn’t…at first.
Right Song, Wrong Supermodel
“Uptown Girl” started out as a classical piece before Joel gave it the doo-wop treatment. When the singer began adapting the song about wooing his supermodel girlfriend, that supermodel girlfriend was a 19-year-old Elle Macpherson. Before Joel finished the song, Macpherson moved to Europe to further her career, and Joel moved on to Brinkley. Joel told Howard Stern on the shock jock’s radio show that the song had started out about Macpherson, but by the time he finished the song, it had become about Brinkley. At least the song worked out for him, even if the “girl” didn’t.
