Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” has been accused of having “sinister vibes” by a Gen Zer, leaving the internet with so many questions.
X user @plumjae couldn’t have possibly foreseen the firestorm they were drumming up when they initially shared a fairly innocuous tweet about a recent rideshare experience.
“I was in an Uber share today and a song came on that had the most sinister vibes ever and all three of us were sitting in dead silence,” they wrote on January 3.
Naturally, people were curious as to what song @plumjae could possibly be talking about. But whatever expectations there might have been were shattered when they ultimately determined which song they had been listening to and clued everyone in.
That song? Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl.”
What is ‘Uptown Girl?’
Chances are you’ve heard “Uptown Girl” at least once in your life. Yes, even if you don’t listen to music from the 1980s or are seconds away from searching “Who is Billy Joel?”
In addition to getting play in Ubers (whether from a classic radio station or drivers’ personally curated playlists), the song also still pops up in movies and TV, including recent hits like The Boys and Succession. It was also name-dropped in Olivia Rodrigo’s “deja vu.”
“Uptown Girl” is one of Joel’s biggest hits—a song about falling in love with a girl above his class and proving himself to her. Nothing that particularly screams “sinister vibes” here, right?
Does Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’ have sinister vibes?
When @plumjae shared the song, they added that it made them “scared as fuck the Uber was just gonna drive us off the road” when it came on.
“I do not like the energy this song brought into the car,” they added.
If you can’t immediately call the song to mind, give it a quick listen. Even just 30 seconds.
It’s upbeat. It’s in a major key. It’s hardly giving off vibes that would leave the average person feeling ill at ease, let alone act as foreshadowing that an Uber driver was about to murder a car full of people.
Which begs the question handed down from generation to generation: Are the kids alright?
zoomers are afraid of Uptown Girl. what does this say about our country’s military readiness https://t.co/mNINZv5wJf
— DEI speedwagon🌹🇵🇸 〽️ (@uhshanti) January 4, 2025
>most sinister vibes ever
— Toastshake (@Toastshake1) January 5, 2025
>looks inside
>it’s uptown girl https://t.co/MqV3WuOgjb pic.twitter.com/j9Ywe6NBAV
Why would anyone be scared of ‘Uptown Girl?’
Some people did try their best to understand or rationalize @plumjae’s insistence that “Uptown Girl” is a song with “sinister vibes.”
Several suggested Hollywood has made such a point of repurposing upbeat songs for horror movie trailers or dark moments in film and TV that expectations of them may have shifted. And it’s honestly not a bad point to make.
Obviously “Uptown Girl” is from the 80s but it’s a throwback to those older sounds, and a teenager who doesn’t know this music isn’t going to make a huge distinction between this song and, like, Lesley Gore
— kyle (@Caol_MacCormaic) January 5, 2025
Someone else suggested there’s “musical conflict” in the song suggesting the lyrics actually hint at a tragic ending.
However, “Uptown Girl” modulates between two major keys, likely to represent the two different worlds of the uptown girl and the downtown guy who falls in love with her. While the blog cited notes that may suggest the narrator doesn’t end up with the girl because it ends in the key representative of her uptown life, the foreshadowing of a failed romantic pursuit hardly fits the “sinister” claims.
Music intended to invoke feelings of unease more often involves something like a minor key, dissonant chords, and/or a lack of resolution—things that are jarring to the ear, even when you don’t know why.
im a music theory guy but unfortunately the reason uptown girl has sinister vibes has nothing to do with music theory. its because billy joel is from long island. hope this helps.
— 33 toes (@33_toes) January 5, 2025
‘Uptown Girl’ gets the meme treatment
As affronted as many were about the initial tweets, others just ran with it.
uptown girl…she knows ive seen her in her uptown world https://t.co/fix8qJ666J pic.twitter.com/p85B04tTeJ
— jay 🪸 (@gfuelad) January 4, 2025
really coming around on sinister Billy Joel the more i think about idk pic.twitter.com/kXjmD7NYfA
— jude (@judecomputer) January 5, 2025
— Aaron (@smHttr) January 6, 2025
She said I am 25 and I am SCARED of the fun hit Billy Joel song “Uptown Girl” https://t.co/ZTQ6QX0y5i
— meredith (@themeredith) January 4, 2025
we need to show the Uptown Girl person Love Shack
— trash jones (@jzux) January 5, 2025
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