Just the Way You Are

Joel wrote this song about his first wife, Elizabeth. A pure expression of unconditional love, he gave it to her as a birthday present. Sadly, after nine years of marriage, Joel and Elizabeth divorced in 1982. Joel's next two marriages didn't work out either: he was married to Christie Brinkley from 1985-1994, and to Katie Lee from 2004-2010. "Every time I wrote a song for a person I was in a relationship with, it didn't last," Joel said. "It was kind of like the curse. Here's your song - we might as well say goodbye now."

According to Joel, some listeners missed the point and thought the song was misogynistic because he was telling a woman she wasn't "allowed" to change. "No, no, no. Don't go changing to try and please me," he told SiriusXM in 2016. "People forget these things. If they don't like what I do, they'll go, 'Oh yeah, he hates women. Look at this. Don't change, stay the way you are, the same old someone that he knew. Wow, he really doesn't like her.' Don't change for me. You wanna change for yourself, fine. But you don't have to change for me because I'm happy exactly the way you are. That's why I love you in the first place."

After Joel recorded this, he didn't think much of it, considering it a "gloppy ballad" that would only get played at weddings. He credits his producer, Phil Ramone, with convincing him that it was a great song. Ramone brought Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow into the recording studio to hear the song, and of course they loved it, which was good enough for Billy. On Australian TV in 2006, Joel confirmed: "We almost didn't put it on an album. We were sitting around listening to it going naaah, that's a chick song."