Some of the city’s most recognizable entertainers take turns singing, dancing and playing instruments in a new music video covering Billy Joel’s 1976 song.
As New York awakes from its slumber, it’s clear this isn’t just any morning. There’s Stephen Colbert, emerging onto a rooftop, and Peppermint, a drag queen, strolling on a bridge in glittering heels. On the Lower East Side, Sara Bareilles is sitting in a cafe, but she has something on her mind, so she’s not touching her lox bagel. “Some folks like to get away,” she croons, “take a holiday from the neighborhood.” That’s the opening line of Billy Joel’s 1976 song “New York State of Mind.” Some of New York’s most recognizable entertainers follow Ms. Bareilles, as they take turns singing, dancing, playing instruments and — for the less musically inclined, like Andy Cohen — kissing a camera, in a music video that was released on Sunday in an effort to uplift the city as it recovers from the pandemic. “New York State of Mind,” with its lyrics about the Hudson River, Greyhound buses and this newspaper, is a fixture in any situation in which New York spirit is required, and it has been invoked in hard times over the years, from the city’s fiscal crisis in the 1970s to the aftermath of 9/11.
