Movin' Out (Anthony's Song) (original) (raw)

"Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" is a song written and recorded by Billy Joel originally appeared on his 1977 album The Stranger. The track details the singer's disgust with the upwardly mobile bourgeois aspirations of working- and lower-middle-class New Yorkers who take pride in working long hours to afford the outward signs of having "made it". Characters have stereotypically ethnic names (Anthony, Mama Leone, Sergeant O'Leary, Mr. Cacciatore) and blue-collar jobs. Joel considers their rejection of their working-class roots (trading a Chevy for a Cadillac and buying a house in Hackensack, New Jersey) ultimately futile. Near the end of the recording is the sound of a car starting up and driving away; the bass player Doug Stegmeyer's 1960s Corvette was used.