Only the Good Die Young

Virginia, as mentioned in the first line ("Come out, Virginia, don't let me wait") is Virginia Callaghan, a girl Billy had a crush on when he first started playing in a band. She didn't even know he existed until she saw him at a gig, but 13 years later he used her as the main character in this song about a Catholic girl who won't have premarital sex.

Many musicians join bands to meet girls, but few overachieve the way Joel did, dating models and even marrying one of them (Christie Brinkley). Virginia Callaghan was the first of these girls who thought differently of Joel after seeing him perform. Billy explained to Uncut in 1998: "I originally started in bands just to meet girls – it was round the time The Beatles first hit America – but I didn't know you could actually make a living out of it. My first gig was in a church, about '64 – we did Beatles songs, and this girl I had a crush on, Virginia Callaghan, who normally wouldn't look twice at me, just stared at me through the whole gig. And I thought, 'This is so cool!' And then all these other girls were lookin' at me as well. Then, at the end of the night, the priest comes up and gives us like 15 dollars apiece, which in '64 was a fortune! Girls and money! Man, I was hooked."

This song was originally recorded with a reggae groove, which can be heard on some bootlegs that were inadvertently leaked via drummer Liberty DeVitto's camp. DeVitto didn't like the reggae beat, which is why Joel changed it.