The Daily Feather – Don’t Ask Me Why Payrolls Were So Strong

“Overdubbing” is used widely in musical production by singers, solo instrumentalists, ensembles and orchestras. The technique adds richness and complexity to the original recording, converting it into a ‘big’ sound, one that mimics many performers. Overdubbing took one of Billy Joel’s biggest hits to new heights. “Don’t Ask Me Why” was the fourth single from his Glass Houses album and features a 15-layer piano overdub in the tune’s midsection. Besides the overdubbing, the Latin-infused hit includes handclaps, maracas and castanets, and even rat-a-tapping high-heeled shoes for bigger bigness. Songfacts.com explained that Joel and his producer Phil Ramone were brainstorming percussion ideas to give the song’s bridge a Spanish flavor when Joel noticed that Laura Doty, the studio’s receptionist, was wearing shoes with high heels. He asked to borrow them and used them to tap out the flamenco-style rhythm – with his hands – on a table in the lobby of A&R Records. The musical world is forever indebted to Ms. Doty.

The furious tapping heard across Wall Street on Friday emanated not from pianos, but rather keyboards. Call it the Bull’s Serenade. Brandishing a 245,000 month-over-month (MoM) gain, nonfarm payrolls blew past all comers in Bloomberg’s survey, and came in nearly 100,000 north of the 150,000 consensus. Add in the prior two months’ upward revision of 72,000 and the headline equated to a 326,000 advance. The one-tenth decline in the unemployment rate and upside to average hourly earnings added to good news. Stocks and the U.S. dollar rallied, while Treasuries sharply bear flattened as futures markets completely priced out a half-point move for November. Even out-of-consensus calls for the Fed to pause rate cuts surfaced after the market closed.