Pop Song 17 'She's always a woman' Billy Joel 1977

'She's always a woman' Billy Joel Cyrus Saladin Ming April 5, 2020

Musically, Joel has said that he was influenced by Gordon Lightfoot and his mellow acoustic guitar ballads. It is a love song that Joel wrote for his then wife, Elizabeth Weber. Elizabeth had taken over management of Joel's career, and was able to put his financial affairs in order after Joel had signed some bad deals and contracts. She was a tough and savvy negotiator who could "wound with her eyes" or "steal like a thief", but would "never give in". Because of her tough-as-nails negotiating style, many business adversaries thought she was "unfeminine," but to Joel, she was always a woman

Joel stated in an interview that he was attempting to replicate the fingerpicking common in folk guitar music.[3] He accomplishes this by playing arpeggiated triads in the right hand. He also notes that the production was purposely minimal to capture the purity of the tune as a folk song.

Joel claims that the meter of the song is 6/8. This splits each measure into two full triad ascending arpeggios. The song is in the key of Eb major. It begins with singing over the chords each played without the arpeggio in the first verse, each chord lasting a full measure. In the second verse he begins arpeggiating, with each chord again lasting a full measure.

The choruses are in the relative minor of Eb major, which is C minor. In the second part of each chorus Joel switches to the parallel minor of Eb minor before returning to verse