In 1983, at 34 years old, Billy Joel still believed in the fairy tales with a happy ending.
Or maybe he wanted his audience to believe it.
The fact is that he released, as a second single from his album An Innocent Man, a song worthy of the most classic romantic comedy: Uptown Girl.
It seems that, originally, the song was titled Uptown Girls - because Joel had had the idea during a meeting with the singer Whitney Houston and the models Christie Brinkley and Elle Macpherson - but Joel changed his mind after being struck by Brinkley, who became, in fact, his second wife.
Uptown Girl talks about a normal boy (Billy Joel only in fiction, given that in 1983, he was at the height of success) who tries to conquer a rich girl.
A fairy tale with a happy ending, of course.
The musical style brings back to that of the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, to whom Billy Joel has repeatedly said he was inspired.
We Italians have not known the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons in their glory years ('60s and 70s), but Frankie Valli sang Grease, the main theme of the film of the same name that we know well.
Returning to Uptown Girl, the single has achieved excellent commercial, radio, and television success.
Who does not remember the video with Billy Joel and his backup singers who work as mechanics in the workshop where Christie Brinkley arrives with a Rolls Royce?
At the end of the video (but I should say at the happy ending of the video), the two protagonists go by motorbike.
In 2001, the cover of Uptown Girl became one of the most successful singles of the Irish band Westlife.
Their version of the video saw them as employees of a hamburgheria in which the uptown girl Claudia Schiffer enters.
And now, a little romanticism with the video of the original version, which reached over 260 million views on YouTube.
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