Songs from '78: "My Life"

Forty years ago yesterday, Billy Joel released "My Life," the first single off 52nd Street, one of his greatest albums. I have no memory of when I first listened to the album all the way through--in fact, it might not have been until I was in college (for years, my sole Billy Joel Bible was Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II; it was a long time before I listened to anything else by him). I love the album now, particularly "Zanzibar." But it was "My Life" off of that collection which has stayed with me longest, primarily because of how it always reminded me of a short-lived television show that, for some reason, I really, really enjoyed as a 12-year-old boy:



This is the actual video, and it has all sorts of stylized tough-guy New York notes to it. But I think I still kind of like the vision of a young Tom Hanks in drag better.