Singer-songwriter Alexa Ray Joel, daughter of Hicksville-raised music star Billy Joel, on Friday released a stylish, mid-century-modern video to accompany “Heavy Eyes,” a single from her five-song EP “Tales From a Winding Tower” set for release later this year.
Directed by New York City-based photographer-filmmaker Oliver Halfin, who has helmed videos for bands including Tesla and The Dead Daisies, the 3-minute, 17-second video was shot on 16 mm and 8 mm film stock for retro authenticity. The scenario is a gauzy world of ’60s imagery, from cat-eye glasses and white ladies’ gloves to a 45 rpm portable record player. Intercut with the narrative of a couple out for a drive are shots of Joel, dressed in period fashion, crooning before an old-fashioned microphone that recalls the iconic Shure 55 series.
“That was such an amazing time for music and style,” Alexa Ray Joel, 40, said by phone from her supermodel mother Christie Brinkley’s estate in Bridgehampton. “When I wrote and produced ‘Heavy Eyes’ for my EP, I wanted it to be reminiscent of torch ballads like ‘Ruler of My Heart’ by Irma Thomas or ‘At Last’ by Etta James.”
The video’s exterior shots were filmed on local roads near the estate, she said. “We have this beautiful vintage Mercedes that my father gifted to me. And my fiance [restaurateur and real estate broker Ryan Gleason, 48] came up with the idea. He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to take the car and have a whole ’60s -style driving moment?’ “
The initial plan, Joel said, was “to be in a diner with a jukebox. And then we realized it’s not so easy to rent a diner out for 10-plus hours. So we had to think of what other kind of cute, nostalgic moments we could play with. But my favorite setup from the video is just me singing into that vintage mic with the smoky background.”
The song, which Joel began writing in 2018, dropped on Nov. 25, three months after the more pop-rock “Riverside Way,” another song on the upcoming EP. For now, the singer, a regular on the cabaret circuit, has no gigs scheduled. “When the time comes, I will 100% be at a New York venue sooner rather than later,” she said.
She would also like her famous father — who on Jan. 2 performed two songs with the Billy Joel tribute band Turnstiles onstage in Wellington, Florida, where he has a home — to “do a little surprise pop-up in New York.”
That may or may not happen due to the 76-year-old Rock & Roll Hall of Famer’s normal pressure hydrocephalus — a common, treatable brain disorder that affects balance and which he revealed in May as the reason for canceling planned concerts. “I did have a conversation with him about wanting him to stay safe and stay seated [when onstage] for now,” she noted. “I said, ‘Pop, I don’t want you throwing that microphone around anymore. This is not a good time to be putting your balance at risk at all.’ And he knows that, of course, and he prioritizes his health.”
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