Billy Joel Songs - Summer, Highland Falls Lyrics

Billy Joel - Summer, Highland Falls

Billy Joel - Summer, Highland Falls Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Turnstiles
Released: 1976

Summer, Highland Falls Lyrics

They say that these are not the best of times
But they're the only times I've ever known
And I believe there is a time for meditation
In cathedrals of our own

Now I have seen that sad surrender in my mother's eyes
I can only stand apart and sympathize
For we are always what our situations hand us
Its either sadness or euphoria

So we'll argue and we'll compromise
And realize that nothing's ever changed
For all our mutual experience
Our separate conclusions are the same

Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity
A reason coexists with our insanity
Though we choose between reality and madness
Its either sadness or euphoria

How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies
Perhaps we'll help fulfill each other's fantasies
And as we stand upon the ledges of our lives with our respective similarities
Its either sadness or euphoria

Writer/s: JOEL, BILLY
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Summer, Highland Falls

A track from Billy Joel's fourth album, this song is about manic depression. He wrote it in 1975 during a transitional period in his life when he was moving back to New York after spending the previous three years in California. At a Howard Stern Town Hall event in 2014, Joel explained: "It was more about manic depression than depression. That song was about a relationship that wasn't really working out. It was very disappointing - you want everything to work out and when it doesn't, how do you deal with that?"

Joel wrote the music to reflect the highs and lows of manic depression. The song has a musical piano theme: the left hand plays the "depression" part, going slowly up and down, while the right hand is the "manic" part, playing a bouncy bit. "It actually describes manic depression in the music," says Joel.

Many yearbooks have been filled with the opening lines to this song:

They say that these are not the best of times
But they're the only times I've ever known

It's a very unusual song in that the title doesn't appear in the lyric and there's no chorus. This limited its hit potential, but the song has endured as a favorite for many of Joel's ardent fans.

Highland Falls is the village in the southern part of New York State where Joel lived at the time.