As one of the many highlights on Billy Joel’s best-selling 1977 studio album ‘The Stranger’, the love ballad “Just the Way You Are” ranks as an essential song in Joel’s rich repertoire. While the musician’s personal love life was turbulent and not always successful, he could write a love song like no other. In this article, we will dive into the story and meaning behind Joel’s classic.
Elizabeth Weber
Billy Joel wrote “Just the Way You Are” for his first wife Elizabeth Weber. The pair were married from 1973 to 1982 and had a tumultuous relationship. Weber was a source of inspiration for Joel, as he also wrote “She’s Always a Woman” and “She’s Got a Way” for her. She is also the ‘waitress practicing politics’ in Joel’s signature song “Piano Man”.
According to Joel, he came up with the song’s melody during a dream. A few weeks later, during a business meeting, the melody reoccurred to him. As a songwriter with his priorities straight, Joel stopped the meeting, went home, and wrote “Just the Way You Are” in a matter of hours.
To surprise his wife with the song he had written for her, Joel played it for Weber as a birthday gift. Her supposed reply was rather unusual: “Do I get the publishing too?” Although it might have been said jokingly, the comment was a hint at the prospect of their relationship. “In retrospect, I probably should have known right then and there that the relationship was doomed,” Joel commented. “I had written ‘Just the Way You Are’ for someone who had changed.”
Just the Way You Are
The meaning behind Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” is straightforward: ‘You don’t have to change for me, I love you just the way you are.’ It makes the song a declaration of love that expresses unconditional acceptance.
“To this day I still empathize with the song’s main feeling: ‘I love you just the way you are,’ Joel reflected. “Everybody wants to be told that – I always have. You want to be accepted for who you are – not for who you appear to be, or what you present as perhaps a mask to the world, but for exactly who you are.”
In the bridge, Joel changes the perspective of the song. He wonders what it will take for his lover to believe in him as he believes in her. “That edge of anxiety made it a more meaningful song,” he stated.
Dissatisfaction
Despite the song’s effortless sound, recording it was far from easy. Joel was even so dissatisfied with the song, that he considered scrapping it from The Stranger. Luckily, Phoebe Snow and Linda Ronstadt came to the rescue (who were brought into the studio by producer Phil Ramone). After Snow heard the song, she urged Joel to put it on the record. Ronstadt went even further and stated that “Just the Way You Are” was one of the greatest songs she had ever heard.
Snow and Ronstadt’s words convinced Joel to include “Just the Way You Are” on the record. “All of this shows how much I know about hit records,” Joel later funnily remarked.
Release and Legacy
The song was released on Billy Joel’s fifth studio album The Stranger in September 1977. 2 months later, “Just the Way You Are” was released as the album’s second single. It became Joel’s biggest hit single to date, reaching number 3 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Despite the initial dissatisfaction with the song, Billy Joel has grown a liking for it. “I think it’s a well-written song. It’s got a good chord progression, a clever melody, and a great sentiment in the lyric,” he stated. While the declaration of ultimate love the song expresses was broken, it at the very least inspired Joel to write one of his most celebrated songs.
