SONG OF THE DAY
“Only The Good Die Young” by Billy Joel (The Stranger, Columbia Records, 1977). Written by Billy Joel.
INTERESTING FACTS (from wikipedia)
– The girl’s name, “Virginia,” is a play 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. He sings, “You Catholic girls start 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.”
– 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.
– The song reached #24 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 charts in 1977.