“You’re So Vain”, “Go Your Own Way”, “How Do You Sleep”…the vast majority of diss tracks in modern musical history have to do with the singer’s feelings toward a specific person (even if that person is never technically specified, á la the first Carly Simon track). We don’t often see diss tracks that a musician writes from someone else’s scorned perspective. But Billy Joel’s 1978 track “Big Shot” is a notable exception.
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Joel certainly doesn’t mince his words in the refrain of this biting classic. “You had to have the last word last night / You know what everything’s about / You had to have a white hot spotlight / You had to be a big shot last night.” Most of us can recall situations where we recognize someone around us acting like a big shot. Far fewer of us would be ready to admit when we were the ones acting that way.
Joel doesn’t paint a pretty picture of his song’s subject. And given just how well he articulates his feelings, one might assume he was talking about someone from his own perspective. However, as Joel revealed in a 2010 interview with Howard Stern, he wrote “Big Shot” as if he were Mick Jagger talking to his wife, Bianca Jagger.
Billy Joel Wrote “Big Shot” As a Diss Track to Someone Else, for Someone Else
Rumors about “Big Shot” inevitably transformed into the idea that Billy Joel wrote the 52nd Street track after he went on a date with Bianca Jagger. But as the rock ‘n’ roll songwriter later clarified, he never went on a date with Bianca. He did, however, go out to eat with Bianca and her then-husband, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. Joel recalled Mick being frustrated with Bianca’s extravagant lifestyle, a feeling he encapsulated in the 1974 Stones track, “Luxury”. “I’m working so hard to keep you in the luxury,” Jagger laments in the mid-70s cut. Four years later, Joel took a stab at it.
Adopting Mick Jagger’s perspective, Joel sings, “They were all impressed with your Halston dress / and the people that you knew at Elaine’s / And the story of your latest success kept ‘em so entertained.” Naturally, there was a bit of editorializing on Joel’s part. But generally speaking, he seemed to capture the ill-fated nature of Mick and Bianca’s relationship. The same year Joel released “Big Shot”, Bianca filed for divorce from Mick on grounds of adultery. (Mick had already begun dating model Jerry Hall).
As Joel explained to Howard Stern in 2010, he didn’t just try to adopt Mick’s mindset. He also, whether totally consciously or not, wrote “Big Shot” in a style reminiscent of Mick’s vocal delivery and timbre. “I was thinking of him singing that to Bianca Jagger,” Joel said. He added an exaggerated Jagger affectation to his voice as he sang, “had to be a behhhg shot daaantchyah?”
Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images
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