It hit the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for one week on September 24, 1983, replacing "Maniac" by Michael Sembello.

[3] Cash Box said that the song "harks back to [Joel's] urban rock ’n’ roll roots" and begins "with a falsetto straight out of Smokey Robinson & The Miracles and then proceeds to offer friendly advice via the sound of ’60s Motown — horns, back-up vocals, rhythms and all.

There is even a brief scene of a Soviet cosmonaut in space listening to the song, with the lyrics displayed at the bottom in the Russian language and in Cyrillic script.

Joel performed the song fairly regularly after its release for a few years during the tours to support his albums An Innocent Man and The Bridge.

The song however was dropped after the latter tour and it has not been performed live since 1987, making it one of the very few major hits across his career that he no longer plays in his concerts.