Listening to Billy Joel on his Sirius XM Channel, I heard him tell the story of how he came to write Uptown Girl.
I had always thought that he wrote it to and about Christie Brinkley. The song’s video (below) certainly implied that when it showed Billy as a car mechanic meeting up with Christie in her Rolls Royce and him wanting to … well you know.
However, turns out that Billy initially wrote the song about another supermodel he had been dating at the time – Elle Macpherson (right.)
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| https://www.songfacts.com/facts/billy-joel/uptown-girl |
Billy noted on Sirius that his musical inspiration for Uptown Girl was the song Rag Doll by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Whereas Frankie and Company sang about a dude falling for a poor girl, Billy flipped it around with the girl being someone who was way out of his league. Like most guys I know, and definitely speaking for myself, we all seem to marry way above our station in life don’t we?
I’ll leave you with a connection you’ve never made – David Norris and Billy Joel. Think about it.
