I think that Tootsie is one of the most important movies ever made.
I wanted to do a Paul Williams song because Paul Williams is so fascinating to me. He’s another figure of the ’70s who really could’ve only thrived in the ’70s. Meaning, he’s not a great-looking guy. He was on television all the time, and he looked like an albino lesbian who worked at the Keebler factory.
I developed this pretty raging Alice Cooper obsession, listening to every album of his — early stuff, mostly before Welcome to My Nightmare. On Billion Dollar Babies, he opens that record with “Hello Hooray” and it’s such a stadium anthem. It’s a proclamation of being here and taking up space, and I thought it was so cool to come back to New York and do that. As I was researching the song, I found out that it was actually a cover and that Judy Collins had recorded it originally. When I found her version, I almost passed out — it was so funny. It’s like a faux Joni Mitchell thing, very folky, quiet, and then it comes into this Mamas and the Papas arrangement. It’s just a song that means something completely different and that was really funny, and also just a tribute to the fact that the ’70s were the weirdest time in the world.
First of all, Billy Joel is a ridiculous human. He’s a very, very silly person. His lack of sense of humor about himself is what makes him the funniest artist that’s ever lived. He’s just so not self-aware that it’s arguably shocking. So he put this Vietnam ballad out when he was not in Vietnam, and there’s just a lot of hubris there.
In my first book, I Don’t Care About Your Band, I called the music of Ben Folds “Pippin with a yeast infection.”
