This song has always bugged me! While this song sounds so beautiful, what the heck is Billy Joel saying? I can only conclude he’s gracefully saying she’s really a bitch, right? What is your take on this song? - Jinx 
A friend in college used to sing it, “She’s always inhuman to me.”
Misogyny aside, I think he’s saying they’re enigmatic, e.g. “She’s frequently kind and she’s suddenly cruel.” Black and white make a lot of grey…they’re not simple creatures.
I wanna know what “She can’t be convicted – she’s earned her degree” means.
What degree did she get that gives her a free pass out of prison? I’ve got a stack of degrees, but none of them are going to keep me out of the hoosegow.
Agreed that it is a beautiful song and that she sounds like a bitch.
But I think Billy might have been singing about unconditional love. Perhaps he was saying that no matter what, he loves her.
Thinking through the lyrics. . . . that’s not complex, that’s bipolar. Chick’s gonna bake forty dozen cookies one day, then slash all your shirts with a straight razor the next.
Oh! I know her!
“Convicted” in the sense of “convinced, swayed by argument”, which is what it originally meant. Webster’s Dictionary gives the definition “to convince of error or sinfulness” just ahead of “to find a defendant guilty”. “Conviction” can also mean a standing belief that has not been swayed by argument (“I stand on my convictions”).
To find someone guilty of a crime is called “conviction” because of our trial system of law based on swaying a jury, and the fact that a perfectly good, similar and more commonly used verb exists in “convince”. The standard phrase “the jury is convicted of the defendant’s guilt” turned into an active verb “to convict” meaning “to find guilty of a crime”, and back into a passive form “he was convicted” and even “he’s a convict” to refer to a criminal.
And “earned her degree” is colloquial for “she’s confident in her own knowledge”.
Yeah, it’s an awkward lyric. I’m guessing he felt “convicted” fit the rhythm of the song better than “convinced”.
I always thought it was about a tranvestite.
I see it as Joel wanting to write a song like Dylan’s Just Like a Woman.
I never would have guessed this. I’ve never heard or read anyone using “convicted” as a synonym for “convinced”, and I’ve never heard “she’s earned her degree” as a colloquialism for anything.
You guys are working too hard on this one. Billy Joel, god love 'im, is the king of the cheap rhyme. He was running out of stanza, and needed another rhyme for “always a woman to me”.
It must be said that many of his songs are confusing, internally contradictory, and misogynistic. Pretty, though.
I always thought this was his version of “Lady Is A Tramp”.
I always thought it was “She’s earned her reprieve.”
Oh, yeah, Billy Joel is not such a great lyricist. Like Stevie Nicks, his stuff sounds all profound and shit, but means NOTHING. I mean, what about these lyrics:
They say that these are not the best of times
But they’re the only time I’ve ever known
And I believe there is a time for meditation
In cathedrals of your own
Now I’ve seen that sad surrender in my lover’s eyes
And I can only stand apart and sympathize
For we are always what our situations hand us
It’s either sadness or euphoria
Oooh. Wow, man!
Oh, wait, that doesn’t mean anything.
As I heard it, the song is about his first wife, who was his manager at the time. The point was that she was ruthless, on Joel’s behalf, with the people with whom he had to do business, (the “You” constantly referenced in the lyrics) but she was “always a woman,” that is, loving, to him (the “Me” in the lyrics.)
No, it’s “degree”. It’s clear enough on the recording, or you can see it on lyric sites:
By the way, it occurs to me that “She can’t be convinced, she’s confident of her own knowledge” doesn’t maske much sense, unless you’re trying to make her believe something different.
I always heard it as “decree”, not “degree”. Like a decree of innocence.
Thanks Pal, why don’t you ruin Sgt. Pepper for us next? :rolleyes:
So what’s the deal on “lay traps for troubadors who never reach Bombay?”
Although I heard “degree,” changing it to decree in my head, as in “To ordain, establish, or decide by decree (rather than conviction by peers, etc.),” – again, a decree of innonence – helps me make more sense of it too.