Song · Billy Joel
“The Downeaster Alexa” by Billy Joel
From the album Storm Front (1989)
“The Downeaster Alexa” by Billy Joel appears on 4 radio countdowns from 1 station between 2021 and 2025. It was first released in 1989 on the album Storm Front. Its best result is #630 on the Q104.3 Top 1,043 Classic Rock Songs of All Time (2025). In the combined RockLists rankings it is #2,516 classic rock song of all time.
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"The Downeaster 'Alexa'" sails in off Storm Front, Billy Joel's 1989 album, and it's named for his own boat, which in turn took its name from his daughter, Alexa Ray Joel. Joel sings it in the voice of a Long Island fisherman going broke on the water, one of a whole fleet of men scraping by and struggling to hold on to their boats.
He produced it with Mick Jones and stocked the deck with a harbor-town band: accordion from Joel and Dominic Cortese, Joel's clavinet, Jeff Jacobs on synthesizer, David Brown on guitar, Schuyler Deale on bass and Liberty DeVitto on drums, with Itzhak Perlman, no less, taking the solo on fiddle. Tom Lord-Alge mixed it. It was the album's fourth single, and it turned up again on Greatest Hits Vol. 3 in 1997.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Classic Rock
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 938 | Q104.3 | Q104.3 Top 1,043 Classic Rock Songs of All Time (2021) | 1043 |
| 2022 | 871 | Q104.3 | Q104.3 Top 1,043 Classic Rock Songs of All Time (2022) | 1043 |
| 2024 | 1028 | Q104.3 | Q104.3 Top 1,043 Classic Rock Songs of All Time (2024) | 1043 |
| 2025 | 630 | Q104.3 | Q104.3 Top 1,043 Classic Rock Songs of All Time (2025) | 1043 |
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