Billy Joel and "Code of Silence"

HBO’s excellent new documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes, praises Joel’s chameleon-like ability to compose in multiple genres, something that few music critics did during his time dominating the charts. Instead, they accused him of uninventiveness and trend-hopping, constantly shifting styles to match modern fads. But what crtics missed, most songwriters understood: a lot of artists adjust their songwriting styles, but not many of them do it well. By contrast, Joel’s prowess as a songwriter might rightly be compared to mid-century masters like Cole Porter or Irving Berlin.

One of Joel’s attributes that the documentary spends less time on is his expertise at wordsmithing. At his best, his ability to perfectly capture a character, a feeling, or a situation, is second-to-none. Listen again to songs like “Always a Woman,” “I’ve Loved These Days,” “Goodnight Saigon” and “Innocent Man,” and you might conclude that he’s achieving something far beyond composing catchy hooks.

For me, I can’t think of Billy Joel without recalling a lesser-known tune that he co-wrote with Cyndi Lauper, “Code of Silence,” from 1986’s The Bridge, one of the last vinyl records I purchased before switching over to CDs. It was a letter from a friend of mine that prompted me to examine the lyrics of this song with more attention than I was accustomed to, a letter I still have today. In it, my friend alludes to a past event in her life and how it impacted her, and then goes on to write out the entire lyric of “Code of Silence,” adding that the song describes her “to a ‘T’.”

This revelation hit me hard then, and it’s clearly continued to hit my hard over time, because it led to my composition, “The Diary You Keep,” from my album Trainsongs, and it also inspired an important character in my unpublished novel, Things I Hate About My Mother. I can’t hear “Code of Silence” without thinking of her. She had clearly experienced some sort of trauma, and I don’t need to work too hard to imagine what it might have been.

The lyrics of “Code of Silence” are effective because they express the victim’s point of view so well:

You’ve been through it once
You know how it ends
You don’t see the point of going through it again

And you can’t talk about it
Because you’re following a code of silence
You’re never gonna lose the anger
You just deal with it a different way
And you can’t talk about it
And isn’t that a kind of madness
To be living by a code of silence
When you’ve really got a lot to say?

And later in the tune:

And it’s hard to believe after all these years
That it still gives you pain and it still brings tears
And you feel like a fool, ‘cause in spite all your rules
You’ve got a memory

Joel gives most of the credit to Lauper, who happened to be recording her True Colors album next door to Joel, resulting in the collaboration. In an interview, Joel said “She did all the work.” Regardless of who contributed the lion’s share of the tune, as far as I’m concerned, the Joel-Lauper pairing was a match made in heaven, and I wonder what might have transpired had they committed to composing more songs together.

I’m a melody guy, first and foremost, with lyrics often falling a distant second. But man, when melody and lyrics are coupled together perfectly, it packs a punch. Give it a listen and see if it hits you the same way.

And to my old friend, wherever you might be, I hope you’re well, and I hope you’ve been able to crack the code.