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All You Wanna Do Is Dance
Turnstiles (1976) |
You don't want to deal with the future
You don't want to make any plans Oh, baby, all you wanna do is dance Reggae was all the rage during the mid-1970s in the United States and the UK as Bob Marley became even more popular, and other artists like Eric Clapton and The Police incorporated reggae into their music. "All You Wanna Do Is Dance" was Billy's attempt at reggae (see also the demo version of "Only The Good Die Young"). It is a nice little piece of nostalgia. In fact, the song is about someone who does not want to deal with anything serious, but just wants to dance and live in the past carefree days of the 50s and early 60s. The singer seems to gently admonish this person who wants to bury her head in the sand and "crawl back into yesterday" and wishes that The Beatles would get back together.
As Peter Gambaccini wrote in his excellent 1979 book Billy Joel: "The woman is a child of the Sixties cast adrift in the Seventies, the kind who still want to know when the Beatles are getting back together. 'You wish were back in the good old days when tomatoes where cheaper'" . . . In any case, this is a nice number, very different than anything else Billy has ever done." Liberty DeVitto said that "The song was written in response to disco" in his 2020 book Liberty. Years later, Billy would take his own trip down nostalgia lane with the album An Innocent Man. But he also submits that "the good old days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems" on "Keeping The Faith" from that album.
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Words and Music by Billy Joel
Oh, baby, you don't get turned on by the radio Oh, baby, you got nothing to play on your stereo "Why don't the Beatles get back together?" "Why don't nobody sing of romance?" Oh, baby, all you wanna do is dance Oh, baby, I think you are lost in the Seventies Oh, baby, "The music she ain't what she used to be" You don't understand what they're saying, You've given it every chance Oh, baby, all you wanna do is dance Well you wish you were back in the good old days When tomatoes were cheaper And you never heard the words of your favorite songs Through a three inch speaker And you never messed around with dangerous drugs You were all getting sick on beer And you didn't get any unless you went steady and made out for a year Well you can hide away honey in your rock 'n roll dreams And you can stand by your blue suede shoes But the party is over and I'm getting tired of waiting for you Oh, baby, "Where are the oldies they used to play?" Oh, baby, you want to crawl back into yesterday You don't want to deal with the future You don't want to make any plans Oh, baby, all you wanna do is dance Oh, baby, all you wanna do is dance On an SNL episode on April 24, 1976, producer Lorne Michael publicly offered $3,000 to The Beatles to get back together on SNL Ironically, Paul McCartney was visiting John Lennon that night at his New York apartment and they saw the episode. Read the article about how they almost went to the SNL studio that night as a gag. The photo above is from another SNL episode later that year (l-r: George Harrison, Lorne Michaels, and Paul Simon). Photo by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns via Getty Images.
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Videos
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This is a video I made for "All You Wanna Do Is Dance" featuring clips of popular dances from before the 1970s when "you never heard the words of your favorite song through a three-inch speaker" (or earbuds).
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Live version from Billy's 1976 concert at The Bottom Line (audio only) from the YouTube channel, The Billy Joel Concert Archive.
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Comments
Background photo: Still from Legacy Records video about Turnstiles album cover. Single cover is fictional.