Billy Joel – "Allentown" (1982)

Well, I’m living here in Allentown

And it’s hard to keep a good man down

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I shared a few of the many pop-culture references that the scriptwriters for the Showtime TV series, Billions, filled up their scripts with – presumably because it was too hard for them to write the naturalistic dialogue that is the sine qua non of a compelling television series.  

Here are a few more examples of those references.  To save you the trouble of Googling them, I’ve provided explanations below each screenshot:

(Chris Shiherlis was the character portrayed
 by Val Kilmer in the 1995 movie, Heat.)

(“Shut down like Allentown” is a
reference to today’s featured song.)

(Trautman and Teasle are characters
 in the 1982 movie, First Blood
– the first of the Rambo movies.)

(Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner is the New York
Jets cornerback who was voted the NFL
Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2022.)

(Magnus Carlsen is the Norwegian chess
grandmaster who has held the #1 spot in
the FIDE world chess rankings since 2011.)

*     *     *     *     *

Here’s one final example of the pop-culture references in the Billions scripts:

If you understand that one, you might not want to admit it: Nikki Dial and Rocco Siffredi were big porn stars in the nineties.

*     *     *     *     *

Bethlehem Steel – which once employed 300,000 workers – took its name from the Pennsylvania city where it was headquartered.  

So why did Billy Joel title his song about the decline of steel manufacturing in the Lehigh Valley after the neighboring city of Allentown?  Partly because of the religious connotations of Bethlehem, and partly because Joel thought it would be easier to come up with words that rhymed with Allentown.

Click here to listen to “Allentown,” which was released on Billy Joel’s eighth studio album, The Nylon Curtain, in 1982.

Click here to buy “Allentown” from Amazon.