by Lesley Aeschliman

Created on: May 30, 2011

Billy Joel’s Storm Front album was released on October 30, 1989. The album peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart, and also produced one of Billy Joel’s number one singles (“We Didn’t Start the Fire”).

The album opens with “That’s Not Her Style,” which was released as the fifth single from the album; however, the single only peaked at number seventy-seven on the Billboard Hot 100. Personally, I like this song, but sonically, it just didn’t appeal to the pop music audience in the early 1990s. However, this song did a little better on the AOR format. Lyrically, the song talks about the rumors about his then-wife, supermodel Christie Brinkley. The next song is “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which was the first single released for the album, and it reached number one of the Billboard Hot 100. The lyrics of the song are allusions to headline events from March 1949 (when Billy Joel was born) through 1989. The lyrical delivery has been compared to R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the Word As We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” although this delivery is noticeably slower. This song ended up being used to help teach history to students in the early 1990s. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is one of my personal favorite songs on this album.

“The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” was released as the third single from Storm Front, and it peaked at number fifty-seven on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The lyrics of the song tell a story of a fisherman struggling to make ends meet and keep ownership of his boat. The fish stocks are depleting, and he encounters more and more environmental regulations. The name of the boat comes from Billy’s daughter, Alexa. Thematically, this song is similar to “Allentown,” where Billy Joel’s lyrics examined the decline of the coal mining industry. I personally like this song; however, it just did quite fit in sonically with what else was coming out on pop radio at the time. This is followed by “I Go to Extremes,” which was released as a single from Storm Front; it peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Joel has said that the song was written as an apology for his then-wife for his erratic behavior. This is one of the more upbeat songs on the album, and the piano is also a very prevalent instrument on this song. “I Go to Extremes” is a personal favorite of mine from

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