“Vienna” by Billy Joel

"Vienna" slipped out of Billy Joel's 1977 album The Stranger through the back door, as the B-side to "Just the Way You Are", and it had to wait until 2024 for a video of its own. Joel wrote it after a visit to the city, which became his metaphor for growing old; he has also allowed that his father, who walked out on the family when Joel was a kid, may have crept into it without his noticing.

The music does the wistful work. Joel's piano starts out in B-flat, the verses tip over into G minor, and the chorus climbs back up with a lift, so the song keeps rising and settling like a sigh. Dominic Cortese's accordion lends a whiff of old-world café, Doug Stegmeyer and Liberty DeVitto keep the pulse light, and Phil Ramone, who produced and engineered with Jim Boyer, leaves plenty of air around it.

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