Brian Wilson Returns to Capitol, Will Release New Album in September

Brian Wilson will release his new album That Lucky Old Sun via Capitol Records on September 2nd. Wilson premiered the piece, which features contributions from longtime collaborator and arranger Van Dyke Parks, at London's Royal Festival Hall last September. This album marks Wilson's return to Capitol, the original home of the Beach Boys. "It was a sentimental experience for me," says Wilson of his Capitol return. "Just seeing that same room I was in forty-six years ago." Wilson also added that the new album's narrative includes spoken word interludes that contain "some interesting poetic images and spiritual feelings."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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