In 1978, Billy Joel had a Top 20 hit with “She’s Always A Woman”. The song is written by Joel for his The Stranger album. “She’s Always A Woman” became a fan favorite from the beginning. So it’s surprising that, only two years after it was released, Joel all but stopped playing the song in his live shows for the next 25 years.
“She’s Always A Woman” says, “She can lead you to love, she can take you or leave you / She can ask for the truth, but she’ll never believe you / And she’ll take what you give her as long as it’s free / Yeah, she steals like a thief, but she’s always a woman to me.” A sweet love song, Joel wrote it about his first wife, Elizabeth Weber Small. Although the couple split in 1982, Joel stopped playing the song during most of his shows from 1980 to 2005.
Videos by American Songwriter
After later returning it to his setlist, he typically ended the song by saying, “And then we got divorced.
Joel’s relationship with Weber wasn’t without strife. The two began dating while she was still married to Jon Small, his good friend and former music partner.
Why Billy Joel Defends “She’s Always A Woman”
Not everyone was a fan of “She’s Always A Woman”. The song became for Joel a way to defend his first wife, who was also working as his manager at the time.
“If you look at the structure of the song, it says, ‘She can do this to you, she can do that to you, but she’s always a woman to me,’” Joel explains. “That was the point of the song. They’re bitching about her, and I’m saying, ‘You can bitch all you want. She’s great at business, and she comes home, and she’s a woman with me.’”
In a separate interview, Joel further defended the song, and his honest intentions behind it.
“Some people said, ‘Oh, he’s a misogynist; look what he says about this woman,’” Joel says to USA Today. “’He wrote this song called ‘She’s Only a Woman.’’ Which always cracks me up every time I read that. To me, it’s a very simple, understandable lyric. ‘She may be that to you, but she’s this to me.’”
The Stranger remains among Joel’s most successful records. The project also includes “Just The Way You Are”, “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)”, and “Only The Good Die Young”.
Photo by Don Aters/Icon and Image/Getty Images