The Angry Young Man

One day recently, I was painting a room. Having forgotten my earbuds and not wanting to disturb anyone else, I couldn't have music to keep me company so instead, as time went by, the song "The Angry Young Man" by Billy Joel began playing inside my head.

I don't know about you, but I can hear the singer and all the lyrics (and some of the accompanying music) of songs I know well — without benefit of actual sound. It works best with songs I listened to a lot before I was 25, and "The Angry Young Man" (and the album Turnstiles, in general) was a favorite from my freshman year in college onward.

While I like the song, though, I have never agreed with the lyrics. (Maybe this is how Republicans who like Bruce Springsteen or Rage Against the Machine feel?) But I've never tried to work out exactly why until I was trapped with the song for a day.

Here are the words:

There's a place in the world for the angry young man
With his working class ties and his radical plans
He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl
And he's always at home with his back to the wall.
He's proud of the scars and the battles he's lost
He struggles and bleeds as he hangs on the cross
And he likes to be known as the angry young man.

Give a moment or two to the angry young man
With his foot in his mouth and his heart in his hand
He's been stabbed in the back, he's been misunderstood
It's a comfort to know his intentions are good
He sits in a room with a lock on the door
With his maps and his medals laid out of the floor
And he likes to be known as the angry young man.

I believe I've passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage,
I've found that just surviving was a noble fight
I once believed in causes too, had my pointless point of view
Life went on no matter who was wrong or right.

And there's always a place for the angry young man
With his fist in the air and his head in the sand
He's never been able to learn from mistakes
He can't understand why his heart always breaks
His honor is pure, and his courage as well
He's fair and he's true, and he's boring as hell
And he'll go to his grave as an angry old man.

[repeat the first verse]

If you prefer to listen to it, here it is on YouTube (the singing starts just after 1:50).

First, it occurred to me while I was painting and hearing the song echo between my ears that Billy Joel falls into the category I like to call "that's easy for you to say." There he sits with his white male American privilege, and by the time he wrote the song, tremendous economic privilege too... decrying another man who's trying to change the fundamental relations of our world. Joel makes fun of the angry young man (his foot is in his mouth, his head is in the sand, he's righteous... and what could be worse than being boring? oh, I don't know... being a fascist?). The song is a proto-anthem for the anti-social-justice-warrior crowd, which has morphed into the alt-Right.

Joel wrote the song in 1975 or ’76 (the album came out in May 1976) when he was 26 years old or so. He did not grow up working class himself (his father was a classical pianist), though his parents' divorce left his mother with three kids and not enough income, so Joel began playing piano in bars when he wasn't even of legal drinking age. Piano Man came out in 1973, so by 1976 he was rolling in the dough (as described in another song from Turnstiles, "I've Loved These Days").

The lyrics of the bridge section of "Angry Young Man," where Joel finally says what he thinks instead of just criticizing the other guy, are particularly interesting as a statement of his philosophy, especially:

I've found that just surviving was a noble fight

and

Life went on no matter who was wrong or right.

Let's look at those two lines.

The first seems at once totally obvious (sure, we're all human and we have to work to live) and completely inexcusable for a guy born at the peak of American baby-boomer prosperity. Just surviving? I think you had it easier than that, bud. I know I did, as a white woman born 10 years after you. Lots of cognitive surplus available to have empathy for and take action with other people.

And again, sure, life goes on no matter who was wrong or right. So let's all just stay home and never utter a peep about injustice. That's what Martin Luther Kind would do, right? Life goes on... in some form or another. Most likely it will, though nuclear war and climate change could possibly put a dent in that. But don't you care what human life and civilization looks like? Do you believe in democracy, or would you be fine with totalitarianism or feudalism? Eh, who cares, life goes on, the song says.

I'm sure the arguments I'm making about the concepts underlying the song have been exhaustively explored in philosophy, and they probably even have a name within moral philosophy or ethics. But to me it's just the Angry Young Man Cop-out.

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I wonder what Joel thinks of his song at this point in 2018. Looking around to see where he stands on things, I'm reminded he wore a Star of David after the Charlottesville neo-Nazi march, so maybe he's changed his mind a bit.

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"The moral conscience at ease accomplishes nothing."
Elizabeth Bruenig, writing in the Washington Post