Only the Good Die Young
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| “Only the Good Die Young” | |||||
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| Single by Billy Joel from the album The Stranger |
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| Released | 1977 | ||||
| Format | 7" | ||||
| Recorded | 1977 | ||||
| Genre | Pop, Rock | ||||
| Length | 3:53 | ||||
| Label | Columbia | ||||
| Producer | Phil Ramone | ||||
| Billy Joel singles chronology | |||||
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"Only the Good Die Young" is a song from Billy Joel's 1977 pop rock album, The Stranger. The song was controversial for its time, with the lyrics describing a boy who tries to convince a Catholic girl who is a virgin to have sex with him.[1] The girl's name, "Virginia," is a pun on "virgin." The boy/narrator believes that the girl is refusing him because she comes from a religious Catholic family and that she believes sex before marriage is sinful. To try to convince her to sleep with him, he sings, "You Catholic girls start [having sex] much too late,/ but sooner or later it comes down to fate./ I might as well be the one." Perceived as "anti-Catholic", the song was banned by many radio stations. "When I wrote 'Only the Good Die Young', the point of the song wasn't so much anti-Catholic as pro-lust", Joel told Performing Songwriter magazine. "The minute they banned it, the album started shooting up the charts."[2]
A demo, included in the box set My Lives, features a slower, reggae version of the song. Joel uses a church organ in the song, aiding the general theme of the song. Joel has stated publicly that he changed the reggae beat to a shuffle beat at the request of his longtime drummer, Liberty DeVitto, who did not like reggae music.
[edit] Chart positions
| Charts | Peak position |
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| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 24 |
[edit] References
- ^ Sagert, Kelly Boyer (2007). The 1970s. New York: Greenwood Press, 177. ISBN 0313339198.
- ^ Bordowitz, Hank (2006). Billy Joel: The Life & Times of an Angry Young Man. New York: Billboard Books. ISBN 978-0-8230-8248-3.
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