Where's The Orchestra?

Album: The Nylon Curtain (1982)
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  • Where's the orchestra?
    Wasn't this supposed to be a musical?
    Here I am, in the balcony
    How the hell could I have missed the overture?

    I like the scenery
    Even though, I have absolutely no
    Idea at all
    What is being said despite the dialogue

    There's the leading man
    The movie star who never faced an audience

    Where's the orchestra?
    After all, this is my big night on the town
    My introduction to the theater crowd
    I assumed that the show would have a song
    So I was wrong

    At least I understand
    All the innuendo and the irony
    And I appreciate
    The roles the actors played
    The point the author made
    And after the closing lines
    And after the curtain calls
    The curtain falls
    On empty chairs
    Where's the orchestra? Writer/s: Billy Joel
    Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
    Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 4

  • Brian from MilwaukeeI have no specific evidence to back this up but I'm convinced that the song is in part a tribute to Harry Nilsson. The phrasing, the style and the melodic and harmonic progression are so like Nilsson. I also think that it's placed at the end of the album as a statement. This album more than any other is so unlike Billy Joel's previous material I imagine this song a s way of recognizing (and maybe even satirizing people who bought the album, listened to it expecting something else and saying "Wait a minute, this isn't Billy Joel." Just my take.
  • Richard from Stone Harbor, NjI forgot to mention how forgotten the song is under the piles of his other stuff. It's a friggin' great song.
  • Richard from Somerdale , NjThis song kinda made The Nylon Curtain similar to The Stranger (album) because it revisits the main song in the end. It differs because at the end of Everybody Has a Dream, it is an almost direct copy of the intro to The Stranger (song), and in Where's the Orchestra?, it is a much slower and more peaceful version of Allentown and not a direct copy.
  • Nikki from Ny, FlMy interpretation is, it's a sad outlook upon life in general at this moment in Billy's life, as many of us go through at least once.
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