The Entertainer - Live at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY - June 1977

This is a semi-autobiographical song about Joel's early career as a musician, knowing that if he didn't continue producing hits, he would soon be forgotten. It's a very pragmatic look at the life of a pop star, covering the unsavory aspects of fame as well as the excitement. Perhaps it was Joel's understanding of the trappings of fame that led to a long and successful career in the music industry.

A big inspiration for this song was the music/variety show The Midnight Special, which was hosted by Wolfman Jack. "I found it kind of infantile the way they would present acts," Joel told Howard Stern. "It wasn't very rock and roll. Midnight Special was kind of an assembly line, and it started to bother me. Like we're all interchangeable."

The line, "If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05," is a reference to how artists often have to cut down their songs for radio stations, which prefer shorter tracks. "3:05" is industry famous as the length Phil Spector had stamped on the single for The Righteous Brothers "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," which he produced - the song was actually 3:50. Joel's experience with truncating a song for radio came a year earlier, when he had to shave more than a minute off of his song "Piano Man" for release as a single.