The Meaning Behind the Billy Joel Song That Paul McCartney Wishes He Wrote [Video]

The chord progression for the song first came to Billy Joel in a dream then disappeared from his memory. When it came back to him one day during a meeting, he rushed home to write it before he lost it again.

“I dreamt the melody, not the words,” recalled Joel. “I remember waking up in the middle of the night and going, ‘This is a great idea for a song.’ A couple of weeks later, I’m in a business meeting, and the dream reoccurs to me right at that moment because my mind had drifted off from hearing numbers and legal jargon. And I said, ‘I have to go.’ I got home and I ended up writing it all in one sitting, pretty much. It took me maybe two or three hours to write the lyrics.”

Released in 1977 on Billy Joel’s fifth album The Stranger, “Just The Way You Are” centered on unconditional love and was originally written by …