Pop Song 487 of 500 'I've Loved these Days' Billy Joel 1976

Pop Song 487 of 500 'I've Loved these Days' Billy Joel 1976

Billy Joel's fourth studio album, Turnstiles, is largely about the singer's return to his native New York after three years of living in Los Angeles. In "I've Loved These Days," Joel takes a sardonic look at the hollow pursuit of hedonism he's leaving behind.
Joel didn't realize how much his life was about to change with the release of his commercial breakthrough, The Stranger, a year later, but he sensed there was a change coming, which led him to write this tune.

"I was recognizing that I was at the end of a certain point in my life. I didn't know it was going to be such a quantum leap with The Stranger album," he told Sirius XM in 2016. "But from '76 to '77 my life was taking on a trajectory that was pretty intense, and I wanted to say goodbye to the era I had come out of, which was 'I've Loved These Days'... I was gonna make a move somehow, something different was gonna happen. It was fraught at that particular time in my life. Things are gonna change. Not with thinking about I'm gonna be a big success. But it's going to change, there's going to be a big change in my life. And then came The Stranger album."

Now we take our time, so nonchalant
And spend our nights so bon vivant
We dress our days in silken robes
The money comes, the money goes
We know it's all a passing phase
We light our lamps for atmosphere
And hang our hopes on chandeliers
We're going wrong, we're gaining weight
We're sleeping long and far too late
And so it's time to change our ways
But I've loved these days
Now as we indulge in things refined
We hide our hearts from harder times
A string of pearls, a foreign car
Oh, we can only go so far
On caviar and Cabernet
We drown our doubts in dry champagne
And soothe our souls with fine cocaine
I don't know why I even care
We'll get so high and get nowhere