| "Only the Good Die Young" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 A-side label of U.S. vinyl single | ||||
| Single by Billy Joel | ||||
| from the album The Stranger | ||||
| B-side | "Get It Right the First Time" | |||
| Released | May 1978 | |||
| Recorded | 1977 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 3:55 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Billy Joel | |||
| Producer(s) | Phil Ramone | |||
| Billy Joel singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
"Only the Good Die Young" is a song written and recorded by Billy Joel from his fifth studio album The Stranger , released in 1978 as its third of four singles.
"Only the Good Die Young" was controversial for its time, with the lyrics written from the perspective of a young man determined to have sex with a Catholic girl. [4] The song was inspired by a high school love interest of Joel's, Virginia Callahan. The boy/narrator believes that the girl is refusing him because she comes from a religious Catholic family and that she believes premarital sex is sinful. [5] 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.
Attempts to censor the song only made it more popular, after religious groups considered it anti-Catholic, [6] and pressured radio stations to remove it from their playlists. [5] "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." In a 2008 interview, Joel also pointed out one part of the lyrics that virtually all the song's critics missed – the boy in the song failed to get anywhere with the girl, and she kept her chastity. [7]
In 2023, Joel said of the song "It's occurred to me recently that I'm trying to talk some poor innocent woman into losing her virginity because of my lust. It's kind of a selfish song – like, who cares what happens to you? What about what I want? ... But on the other hand, it was of its time. This was written in the mid-'70s, and I was trying to seduce girls. Why bullshit about it?" [8]
Billboard described "Only the Good Die Young" as one of Joel's "strongest and catchiest" songs. [9] Cash Box said that "Billy grabs the fun with a rollicking, handclapping beat, raspy sax solo and racy piano licks." [10]
A demo, included in the box set My Lives , is a slower, reggae version of the song. Joel reprised the song's motif in this version with a church organ. Joel has stated publicly that he changed the reggae beat to a shuffle beat at the request of his long time drummer, Liberty DeVitto, who hated reggae music. [6] [11]
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
|
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| New Zealand (RMNZ) [15] | Platinum | 30,000‡ |
| United States (RIAA) [16] | 3× Platinum | 3,000,000‡ |
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. | ||
