Billy Joel: Vienna. LYRICS: Slow down, you crazy child you're so ambitious for a juvenile But then if you're so smart, tell me Why are you still so afraid? Where's the fire, what's the hurry about? You'd better cool it off before you burn it out You've got so much to do and Only so many hours in a day But you know that when the truth is told.. That you can get what you want or you get old You're gonna kick off before you even Get halfway through When will you realize, Vienna waits for you? Slow down, you're doing fine You can't be everything you want to be Before your time Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight Tonight,... Too bad but it's the life you lead you're so ahead of yourself that you forgot what you need Though you can see when you're wrong, you know You can't always see when you're right. you're right You've got your passion, you've got your pride but don't you know that only fools are satisfied? Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true When will you realize, Vienna waits for you? Slow down, you crazy child and take the phone off the hook and disappear for awhile it's all right, you can afford to lose a day or two When will you realize,..Vienna waits for you? And you know that when the truth is told that you can get what you want or you can just get old You're gonna kick off before you even get half through Why don't you realize,. Vienna waits for you When will you realize, Vienna waits for you? -------------------------- BILLY JOEL SAYS: "Why did I pick Vienna to use as a metaphor for the rest of your life? My father lives in Vienna now. I had to track him down. I didn't see him from the time I was 8 'till I was about 23-24 years old. He lives in Vienna, Austria which I thought was rather bizarre because he left Germany in the first place because of this guy named Hitler and he ends up going to the same place that Hitler hung out all those years! Vienna, for a long time was the crossroads. During the Cold War, between the Eastern Bloc, the Warsaw Pact nations and the NATO countries was the city of Vienna... Vienna was always the crossroads - between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. So the metaphor of Vienna has the meaning of a crossroad. It's a place of inter...course, of exchange - it's the place where cultures co-mingle. You get great beer in Vienna but you also get brandy from Armenia. It was a place where cultures co-mingled. There is also a lot of inside stuff on the song. The beginning and the end is very Kurt Weill. That kind of sick, middle-European, kinky decadent thing.. cabaret kinda.... there's a lot of crazy stuff going on. We are seeing the result of it in this ethnic warfare in the Balkans which is a tragedy. This century started out with this Assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo and that begat World War I which begat the Russian Revolution, then you had the Depression then that begat World War II and then that begat the Cold War and all that's over but they're still blowing each other to smithereens in Sarajevo. So this whole thing is going on in middle Europe - it's Kurt Weill. And some composers, Dvořák, Smetana - they captured it." -------------------------- PHOTOS: Creative Commons by the following Flickr users: _dChris, serendipity, adventure.austria, Alex Barth, Astrid Walter, Bagryan, batintherain, bobtravis, Cha già José, chad_k, chepedaja, ChiDN, chrisaut, clickykbd, clows, daniel-weber, Delkarm, dev null, Dom Dada, donvanone, DorteF, DOS82, dugspr, Éole, Er.We, Florian Demmer, foto.freeze, franzj, Gregorius Mundus, gSquare, Helge F, icatus, In_Zukunft_Wien, Incinerator, indigotimbre, IRGlover, jaime.silva, Jakob Hürner, Jean-Marie Welbes, josef.stuefer, JöSi, Julian Turner, Kliefi, Kopernikus1966, laerpel, lakathae, lgh75, loungerie, MarcelGermain, Mark Turner, mekkora, michael.heiss, moe in berlin, MorBCN, mrWerner, nacaseven, nemusns, onkel_wart (off duty), othermore (other), ph...