From Elton John to Billy Joel to Jim Croce, 1973 was a year that saw success in all types of genres with their unique songs. However, it was a year that was especially keen on the success of the singer-songwriter. Here are a few songs from that year that we still love today.
“Piano Man” by Billy Joel
In 1972, Billy Joel worked as a piano player at a bar after his first album was unsuccessful. This song would be the title track of his next album, which ended up being his breakthrough album. “Piano Man” captivates listeners with a story, which is colored by specific characters. There’s the old man, Paul, and a waitress “practicing politics,” to name a few.
“Now John at the bar is a friend of mine / He gets me my drinks for free / And he’s quick with a joke, or to light up your smoke / But there’s some place that he’d rather be.”
“Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” by Jim Croce
This entry on our list of songs earned Jim Croce a No. 1 hit and two Grammy nominations in 1973. He got one for Pop Male Vocalist and another for Record of the Year. Interestingly enough, the song was inspired by an actual person that Croce met while he was serving in the army. Apparently, the two of them were at lineman school together, and this character dipped out, only to come back to get his paycheck. He was taken away for that, but Croce said of the guy: “…I knew someday I was gonna write a song about him.”
“Candle In The Wind” by Elton John
This song was written about Marilyn Monroe, who died in 1962. According to Songfacts, though, Bernie Taupin shared that in a sense, it was about all sorts of famous people and our fascination with them.
“…It’s not that I didn’t have respect for her,” he said of Monroe. “It’s just that the song could just as easily have been about James Dean or Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain. I mean, it could have been about Sylvia Plath or Virginia Woolf. I mean, basically, anybody, any writer, actor, actress, or musician who died young and sort of became this iconic picture of Dorian Gray, that thing where they simply stopped aging. It’s a beauty frozen in time…”
Photo by: Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images
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