Billy Joel - She's Got a Way ( s1 )

 

"She's Got a Way" is a song by American singer-songwriter Billy Joel, originally released on his first studio album, Cold Spring Harbor (1971) and as a single from that album in some countries. It was also featured as a single from the 1981 live album Songs in the Attic, peaking at number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in early 1982.

Lyrics and music

"She's Got a Way" is a love ballad. The lyrics to "She's Got a Way" have the singer describing how various characteristics of a particular woman, such as her laugh, make him love her, even though he can't understand why. To music critic Mark Bego, it's a song about a woman who has "mesmerized" him. Joel biographer Fred Schruers describes the lyrics as a "plainspoken, never-quite-corny adoration of a loved one."

According to a friend of the couple, Bruce Gentile, the song was written about Joel's first wife Elizabeth. Joel's liner notes for Songs in the Attic seem to agree with this, commenting, "Written in 1970, I still feel the same way."

Schruers describes the song's melody as alternating between "surging" and "relenting." The original studio version has minimal instrumentation. The most prominent instruments are Joel's piano and some cymbal crashes. Schruers describes Joel's piano playing as "stately." On the 1983 reissue of Cold Spring Harbor, "She's Got a Way" also incorporated strings, which may have been inspired by a live performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City at which strings were included in the instrumentation.

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