We tend to put older people away, and it’s all about young people. The lyrics, ‘slow down you crazy child’ – in other words, you have a whole life. A lot of people in their 20s think they have to get it all together by their 30s and they kill themselves trying to get the golden ring. “It was an observation that you have your whole life to live. In an interview with the Howard Stern Show, Billy Joel further explained the meaning behind the song lyrics In a lot of these older places in the world, they value their older people and their older people feel they can still be a part of the community and I thought ‘This is a terrific idea – that old people are useful -and that means I don’t have to worry so much about getting old because I can still have a use in this world in my old age. We put them in rest homes, we kinda kick them under the rug and make believe they don’t exist. We treat old people in this country pretty badly. I say to my father “What’s this nice old lady doing sweeping the street?” He says “She’s got a job, she feels useful, she’s happy, she’s making the street clean, she’s not put out to pasture”. She must have been about 90 years old and she is sweeping the street. So I go to visit my father in Vienna, I’m walking around this town and I see this old lady. It was a place where cultures co-mingled. You get great beer in Vienna but you also get brandy from Armenia. It’s a place of inter…course, of exchange – it’s the place where cultures co-mingle. So the metaphor of Vienna has the meaning of a crossroad. During the Cold War, between the Eastern Bloc, the Warsaw Pact nations and the NATO countries was the city of Vienna… Vienna was always the crossroads – between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. He lives in Vienna, Austria which I thought was rather bizarre because he left Germany in the first place because of this guy named Hitler and he ends up going to the same place that Hitler hung out all those years! Vienna, for a long time was the crossroads. I didn’t see him from the time I was 8 ‘till I was about 23-24 years old. Why did I pick Vienna to use as a metaphor for the rest of your life? My father lives in Vienna now. Billy explained the story to New York Times in 2008 Hi father, Helmut Joel, explains that elderly people, too, still can provide something of value to society, as opposed to making them feel like useless people, as does America’s culture. Billy feels bad for her and expresses the sentiment to his father. One afternoon while they were sipping some coffee at a shop by the street, Billy Joel sees an elderly woman sweeping the street. As a teenager of 23, Billy traveled to Vienna to reconnect with his father. The song was inspired by Billy Joel’s father, who left for Vienna, Austria when Billy was eight years old. The Real Story Behind “Vienna” by Billy Joel God forbid, if you don’t reach your dreams, you would have missed the journey, too. Life moves on in the blink of an eye and you might be missing ‘life’ itself while chasing your dreams. “Vienna” is about enjoying the ride before the destination. We expect nothing from the legendary “ Piano Man.” It comes as little surprise that Billy Joel himself wrote the entire song, sang it soulfully, and also played the piano for the music track. The soothing vocals, serenading piano, the hymn of the acoustic guitar, and slow drums complement perfectly what Billy Joel wants to say. Very rarely are there many songs that can hook you in from the first line and keep you glued all the way through to the end. It went “Slow down, you crazy child / You’re so ambitious for a juvenile.” The lyrics matched perfectly to the context of the video and after doing a little research, I found out that this was exactly what Billy Joel intended to convey through his masterpiece “Vienna.” I don’t know what the dolphins were trying to do, but the background music hooked me in with only two sentences. Scrolling through the Instagram feed on one lazy morning, I stumbled upon a short video of two dolphins swimming aggressively towards the shore seemingly trying to ashore themselves.
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