“The Entertainer” by Billy Joel

Billy Joel pulled just one single off Streetlife Serenade in 1974, and he made it a sneer. "The Entertainer" is a cynical, wisecracking look at the pop star as a disposable product, a guy who knows he's only as good as his last hit. One verse even gripes about "Piano Man" getting hacked down to fit radio's clock, and in a neat bit of irony the label on the seven-inch printed the running time as 3:05 when the record actually ran longer.

Michael Stewart produced and shared the arranging with Joel, who sings lead and plays keyboards and Moog. Tom Whitehorse's banjo and pedal steel give it a jaunty, countrified bounce over Emory Gordy's bass, Don Evans's guitar and Ron Tutt's drums, which only helps the bitterness go down. Joel came back to the same theme later with "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.