Billy Joel – Vienna Lyrics - Genius

2025, In ReviewFeaturedChartsVideosPromote Your MusicSign Up45ViennaBilly JoelProducerPhil RamoneTrack 4 on50 Years of the Piano Man Nov. 29, 19776 viewers2.9M views108 ContributorsTranslations

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Vienna Lyrics

In a July 2008 New York Times article, Joel cited “Vienna” as one of his two favorite songs. It was inspired by trip Joel took meeting his father, who abandoned the family when he was eight, in Vienna fifteen… Read More [Verse 1]Slow down, you crazy childYou're so ambitious for a juvenileBut then if you're so smartTell me why are you still so afraid? MmWhere's the fire, what's the hurry about?You'd better cool it off before you burn it outYou've got so much to doAnd only so many hours in a day, hey[Chorus]But you know that when the truth is toldThat you can get what you want or you can just get oldYou're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through, oohWhen will you realize Vienna waits for you?[Verse 2]Slow down, you're doin' fineYou can't be everything you wanna be before your timeAlthough it's so romantic on the borderline tonight, tonightToo bad, but it's the life you leadYou're so ahead of yourself, that you forgot what you needThough you can see when you're wrongYou know you can't always see when you're rightYou're rightYou might also like[Chorus]You've got your passion, you've got your prideBut don't you know that only fools are satisfied?Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true, oohWhen will you realize Vienna waits for you?[Instrumental Break][Chorus]Slow down, you crazy childAnd take the phone off the hook and disappear for a whileIt's all right, you can afford to lose a day or two, oohWhen will you realize Vienna waits for you?[Outro]And you know that when the truth is toldThat you can get what you want or you could just get oldYou're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through, oohWhy don't you realize Vienna waits for you?When will you realize Vienna waits for you?45EmbedCancel

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AboutSong Bio3 contributors

In a July 2008 New York Times article, Joel cited “Vienna” as one of his two favorite songs. It was inspired by trip Joel took meeting his father, who abandoned the family when he was eight, in Vienna fifteen years later. On his visit to Vienna, he noticed the senior citizens were being treated as useful, contributing members of society:

Why did I pick Vienna to use as a metaphor for the rest of your life? … So I go to visit my father in Vienna, I’m walking around this town and I see this old lady. She must have been about 90 years old and she is sweeping the street. I say to my father “What’s this nice old lady doing sweeping the street?” He says “She’s got a job, she feels useful, she’s happy, she’s making the street clean, she’s not put out to pasture”.

Joel has also explained the song is a reminder that:

You don’t have to squeeze your whole life into your 20s and 30s trying to make it, trying to achieve that American dream, getting in the rat race and killing yourself. You have a whole life to live.

“Vienna” was the b-side to the album’s internationally successful lead single “Just The Way You Are”. Despite being the single’s flipside, the song became and has remained one of Joel’s most popular. In 2024, it was the third-most streamed song in his catalog.

Even 50 years after its initial release, many females under 30 identify with the song, with Joel noting its use in the 2004 Jennifer Garner romcom 13 Going on 30 was likely the spark behind this.

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Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

Ask a questionWhat did Billy Joel say about "Vienna"?Genius Answer2 contributors

In one of many Q&A sessions Joel held throughout the 1990s, he was asked by an audience member why he chose Vienna as a metaphor for life and its occasional crossroads. He explained it as the city being a melting pot of people of all cultures and status. Also, as a personal connection, his father left his family for the city and later in life Joel would catch back up with him in Vienna and they would chat about the societal differences of the many people in the city, as well as their purpose in life.

In a July 2008 New York Times article, Joel went into great detail about the song:

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. So I go to visit my father in Vienna, I’m walking around this town and I see this old lady. She must have been about 90 years old and she is sweeping the street. I say to my father “What’s this nice old lady doing sweeping the street?” He says “She’s got a job, she feels useful, she’s happy, she’s making the street clean, she’s not put out to pasture”. We treat old people in this country pretty badly. We put them in rest homes, we kinda kick them under the rug and make believe they don’t exist. They [the people in Vienna] don’t feel like that. In a lot of these older places in the world, they value their older people and their older people feel they can still be a part of the community and I thought 'This is a terrific idea – that old people are useful -and that means I don’t have to worry so much about getting old because I can still have a use in this world in my old age. I thought “Vienna waits for you…”

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."

Billy Joel has confirmed most of this account on other occassions, such as this 1994 career retrospective in Billboard.

+19Who produced “Vienna” by Billy Joel?When did Billy Joel release “Vienna”?Who wrote “Vienna” by Billy Joel?50 Years of the Piano Man (2022)Billy Joel

1. 1. Piano Man
2. 2. Uptown Girl
3. 3. We Didn’t Start the Fire
4. 4. Vienna
5. 5. My Life
6. 6. Just the Way You Are
7. 7. It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me
8. 8. Only the Good Die Young
9. 9. New York State of Mind
10. 10. The Longest Time
11. 11. Zanzibar
12. 12. Everybody Loves You Now
13. 13. She’s Always a Woman
14. 14. A Matter of Trust
15. 15. Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)
16. 16. The Downeaster “Alexa”
17. 17. Don’t Ask Me Why
18. 18. The Entertainer
19. 19. Pressure
20. 20. Scenes from an Italian Restaurant
21. 21. Keeping the Faith
22. 22. Big Shot
23. 23. Say Goodbye to Hollywood
24. 24. The Ballad of Billy the Kid
25. 25. Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)
26. 26. The River of Dreams
27. 27. Allentown
28. 28. Tell Her About It
29. 29. This is the Time
30. 30. Sometimes a Fantasy
31. 31. Prelude / Angry Young Man
32. 32. You May Be Right
33. 33. Captain Jack
34. 34. She’s Got a Way
35. 35. Baby Grand
36. 36. An Innocent Man
37. 37. I Go to Extremes
38. 39. Goodnight Saigon
39. 40. Honesty
40. 41. Leave a Tender Moment Alone
41. 42. Streetlife Serenader
42. 43. All for Leyna
43. 44. Where’s the Orchestra?
44. 45. Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)
45. 46. And So It Goes
46. 48. Summer, Highland Falls (Live at Palmer Auditorium, New London, CT - December 1976) (Unreleased)
47. 50. Souvenir (Live at Palmer Auditorium, New London, CT - December 1976)

The Stranger (1977)Billy Joel13 Going on 30: Music From the Motion Picture (2004)Various ArtistsThe Stranger (30th Anniversary Legacy Edition) (2008)Billy JoelKuschelrock 39 (2025)Various ArtistsExpand CreditsProducerPhil RamoneWriterBilly JoelLabelColumbia RecordsLead VocalsBilly JoelPianoBilly JoelDrumsLiberty DeVittoBassDoug StegmeyerAcoustic GuitarSteve KhanAccordionDominic CorteseRecorded AtA&R Recording, New York, NYReleased onNovember 29, 1977Songs That Sample ViennaIDEAS ARE BULLETPROOF! by EGOVERT & Ein Stein auf deinem Grab by Helena VondráčkováVienna CoversVienna by Estella Dawn, Vienna by Eleni Drake, Vienna by Ariana Grande, Vienna by Tony Lucca, Vienna by Bobby Conte Thornton, Vienna by Mac Miller, Vienna by Ben Platt, Vienna (Billy Joel Cover) by Abstract, Wien wort auf di by Granada, Vienna by Liz Gillies, Vienna by Duncan Therrell, Vienna (Cover) by friday ghost, Vienna by William Fitzsimmons & Vienna by Aden FoyerVienna Live PerformancesVienna(Live At Nassau coliseum Uniondale NY December 1993) by Billy Joel & Vienna (Live at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY - 2006) by Billy JoelVienna TranslationsBilly Joel - Vienna (Türkçe Çeviri) by Genius Türkçe Çeviriler, Billy Joel - Vienna (polskie tłumaczenie) by Polskie tłumaczenia Genius, Billy Joel - Vienna (Deutsche Übersetzung) by Genius Deutsche Übersetzungen & Billy Joel - Vienna (Traducción al Español) by Genius Traducciones al EspañolView Vienna samplesTagsPopRockSinger-SongwriterUSAIn EnglishPiano RockSoft RockPop RockExpand CommentsAdd a commentSign Up And Drop Knowledge 🤓Genius is the ultimate source of music knowledge, created by scholars like you who share facts and insight about the songs and artists they love.Sign Up