State Of Grace by Billy Joel

Album: Storm Front (1989)

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In this power ballad, Billy Joel longs to connect with a lover who is slipping away but realizes his attempts to communicate with her are futile. "I wanted it to be a little bit ethereal," he told Sirius XM in 2016. "You're talking to somebody, 'there you go, slipping away into a state of grace,' and they're just somewhere else. No matter how you try to get through to them, they're above it all. They're in their own bubble. Sometimes you just can't get through to people. I think that's the essence of what that song was."
Liberty DeVitto, who was Joel's drummer for 30 years, told Rolling Stone the song foreshadows the end of the singer's marriage to Christie Brinkley, whom he would divorce in 1994. He said, "He always spilled his beans about his life when writing songs. If you listen to 'State of Grace' from the Storm Front album, you can hear that he and Christie are at their end."
Shortly after their divorce, Brinkley implied it was Joel who had problems in the communication department, not her. She told TV Guide in September 1994: "Just because people can express themselves through their art doesn't mean they are great communicators in person."
Joel compared the song's chord progression to an Escher painting, saying it makes a left turn but somehow ends back up where it's supposed to go. M.C. Escher was a Dutch painter whose 1960 lithograph Ascending And Descending depicted a building with a seemingly never-ending staircase on its roof.
Joel said he thinks this song would be well suited for Daryl Hall's (of Hall & Oates) voice.
Joel never cared much about getting on the charts, but when Storm Front peaked at #1 in the US (and its first single "We Didn't Start The Fire" landed at #1 on the Hot 100), he changed his attitude. "In the old days I used to think, 'Number One? What does it mean?'" he told Rolling Stone in 1989. "I was a real pigheaded little prick back then. Now I realize that Number One does mean a lot to the people who have stuck with me and put up with a lot of crap in the last few years."

Comments: 1

Matt from VirginiaState of Grace is such a beautiful song. I love most of Billy's music, but I believe that God spoke through him on this one. From the instruments selected, to the melody to the way Billy sings it, you can feel the sad resignation of disintergrating relations. It does feel as if it is personal to him. A sad song for sure, but also strong. Thank you to Billy for givng life to it.

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