Billy Joel Sings ‘Uptown Girl’ To Ex-Wife Christie Brinkley Thirty Years After Their Divorce

While performing at Madison Square Garden on Friday night, the singer Billy Joel serenaded his supermodel ex-wife Christie Brinkley with the song “Uptown Girl” thirty years after their divorce. The moment was particularly touching, considering the fact that Brinkley was the inspiration behind “Uptown Girl” when Joel wrote it decades ago.

Joel Serenades Brinkley

“Billy Joel wrote ‘Uptown Girl’ about his then-partner Christie Brinkley,” one fan wrote on TikTok over a video that has since gone viral. “Tonight she watched him sing the song he wrote about her to all of Madison Square Garden.”

“40 years later and your ex man is still grinning at you like that while he sings the song he wrote about how rich and hot you are?” the fan added in the caption.

Daily Mail reported that while “Uptown Girl” (1983) was initially inspired by his relationship with the supermodel Elle Macpherson, they broke up during the process of writing it. Despite this, Joel continued writing the song as he began to date Brinkley, telling Howard Stern in 2010 that “rather than it be about all these different girls, (Brinkley) became the uptown girl,” according to USA Today.

“I started writing it about one person,” he explained as he shot down any claims that the song was not about Brinkley.

Brinkley would go on to star in the “Uptown Girl” music video, which featured her playing a sophisticated, upper-class woman to Joel’s blue-collar mechanic. Relive that epic music video in the video below.

Related: Christie Brinkley Reveals Her Secret To Aging

Brinkley Proud Of Being The ‘Uptown Girl’

Brinkley and Joel were married from 1985 until they divorced in 1994. Despite their split, Brinkley told Yahoo Entertainment in 2019 that she has nothing but fond memories of being the “Uptown Girl.”

“Being the ‘Uptown Girl’ was really fun and it remains really fun to have a theme song,” she said at the time. “You know, you go into tennis and they play it. You go here or on a talk show and they play it as you walk out. It’s really fun to have a theme song, you know? How many (people) get to have that?”

During Friday night’s concert, Brinkley and Joel’s 38 year-old daughter Alexa Ray came onstage to sing “To Sir With Love” for her father, who sat at the piano. She told the crowd that Joel “introduced this song to me when I was just a little girl and it’s a real classic throwback,” according to US Weekly.

Ray went on to say that the song is meant to be about “your hero,” and that her hero is her father.

“Thank you dad, I love you so much,” she concluded. “This is for you.”

Brinkley praised Ray for this performance on Instagram, saying that “the tears welled up when she surprised her Dad with a serenade of ‘To Sir With Love,'” which the proud mom described as “sweetness personified.”