The Songs of 52nd Street

In the summer of 1979, we moved from my childhood home to a new place. We went from where my soul soared to where I felt like a captive bird. Physically, I wasn’t alone there; I had two parents who fought every minute of every day, and two brothers who couldn’t possibly be less interested in the fact that they had a little brother. Back in Lynbrook, I led a rose-tinted life, sheltered by my parents from reality. I was the baby, and that’s what I remained when we moved to the Poconos; a 13 year old baby for whom puberty was in full swing, hormones everywhere, with ZERO examples of what to expect. Coming of age in a land where the closest neighbor with a kid my age was maybe half a mile away. What I did have were comic books about super-powered teenagers and the music of Billy Joel, a white guy with an afro who was from the same land as me, the land I longed for every minute as that caged bird. His album, 52nd Street, a modern classic, is one of the only albums about which I can truly say I know every single word verbatim because I played the album, front and back, over and over. Three of his most giant hits are from side one; Honesty already made the top 10 of my first countdown two years ago. Aside from the mega-hits are songs like Rosalinda’s Eyes and Half A Mile Away, each special to me as they amplified the supplanted feeling by which I was constantly besieged. Until The Night, a Righteous Brothers–inspired piano song, will always remind me of the band room at PMHS, singing the harmonies with a boy I very secretly loved, harkening back to those terrified hormones I spoke of in the first paragraph