After a lifetime thinking this guy was MOR schlock, I have found he is more good AOR schlock, and there isn’t anything worong with that. Loads more hits and that you’d imagine, tunes, a good range of styles, and a variety of melodies that to me place him up there with early 10cc and Supertramp – clever pop. It’s been quite a revelation to me, but I like my prejudices being falsified. Views of the Massive?
Any love for Billy Joel?
by 61 Comments
You can offer all those desperately positive views, but IMHO he’s tragically useless. Good singer, piano player, one early hit that was OK but really a lightweight.
OOAA
Which was the early hit that was ok?
OOAC
Most of his records are great. I discovered The Nylon Curtain a few years back and it is superb stuff – he is worthy of comparison to the above bands you mention and all those other sophisitcated pop merchants we know and love from Steely Dan to Crowded House and back again.
Not a great fan, but I do like Goodnight Saigon, and I think Until The Night is good enough to be Springsteen (or Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil)
I like him, although haven’t heard a lot more than the Innocent Man elpee.
The choir I’m in is singing his And So It Goes at the moment – fine song.
The Stranger is a surprisingly diverse album. This is a particular favourite, led off by a nifty drum pattern by the wonderfully-named Liberty DeVito
He’s done some pap but also more than his fair share of great stuff too
The USSR film is awesome, notwithstanding the hardcore mulletry.
And the documentary that goes with it from a few years ago (it was on Beeb 4).
Incredibly smart, likeable dude.
Agree on the 10cc and Supertramp comparisons. This is great:
Wow! You’ve just given me a proper flashback to 1980, as I don’t think I have heard that song, or even seen the title of it, since then. I have spent a lot of time digging through music of the past/my past over the past 18 months and I have picked a couple of Billy Joel albums up, yet I managed to avoid remembering that song existed. Until now, of course.
With regard to how I feel about him, he’s done a few good albums, half a dozen stone cold classic songs, but lots of mediocre stuff, some painstakingly awful videos and a song that I absolutely can’t abide (We Didn’t Start The Fire). But I’ll forgive him that because of Piano Man, Just The Way You Are (which is probably over the line marked ‘schmaltz’ but I like it anyway), She’s Always A Woman, My Life, The Longest Time, You May Be Right and Tell Her About It. Okay, make it half a dozen classics plus one.
It’s on Glass Houses
The song reminds me of a comment about Jet, that almost every element has a hook of some kind i.e the drop outs in the verses, the subtle change of chords behind the title going into the middle 8 etc. Clever pop indeed.
I bought a 2xCD compilation a few years back on a whim and was actually very impressed with the deeper cuts (like The Downeaster Alexa posted above), though I’d be happy to never hear Uptown Girl or We Didn’t Start The Fire ever again… he often errs on the side of pastiche, but for my money has written enough great songs to get some respect.
I’m also impressed that he’s one of the few artists to admit he has nothing new to offer, and no inspiration to keep writing, hence no new material for almost 25 years (no “pop” anyway, he released a classical album in 2001, and of course he keeps the pension fund topped up with touring…)
(… and Macca used to say that “Just The Way You Are” was the song he most wishes he’d written – and he knows a bit about songwriting…)
Billy Joel is great. Any questions?
And he always puts a great song at the end of his albums. Look:
A quick playlist of lesser known Joel.
The run of albums up to The Nylon Curtain are all full of tuneful, slightly acidic, Beatley-sounding gems, hardly a bad song across the whole lot. I see the 10cc comparison that others have noted. An Innocent Man was a fun record, but I think his media personality (little guy with supermodel girlfriend) got into the songs, and it was a bit unlikeable. I saw him on the tour for The Bridge (the album after) and it was good, but not really his best.
I love the irony (if that’s what it is?) of Piano Man having harmonica as a lead instrument.
The Stranger is a great LP right from start to finish. Amazing that it is a bit forgotten these days.
Funnily enough I dug our my vinly copy the other fast but it’s got something unpleasant growing on it so it needs a clean before I can play it. Listened to it endlessly BITD.
Somebody’s wiped something on your Curtain? Oh dear.
A nylon curtain to boot! think of the static!
FWIIW, I know very little of his stuff outside of the 1980s radio hits, but what I do know,
I like.
I bought a pile of his albums on vinyl in charity stores for pennies. Er, he’s quite good. Not really up there with the greats, has a few good melodies, lyrics are often pretty dismal. Don’t like his voice very much either.
❤️ 52nd Street lp.
Yep. My Life and Big Shot are good. Hard to forgive him for writing Just The Way You Are though.
It was my older brothers LP that I would sneak a listen to on the headphones when everyone else was watching TV or I’d be on my own late at night with suitable lighting. I close my eyes and just soak in The stories and imagine myself in New York as an adult penniless musician with the promise of Rosalinda’s eyes.
With a tab at ‘Zanzibar’.
That Freddie Hubbard trumpet solo! Fantastic!
Sublime by all. Jazz definitely.
The exit Music to this song is only something Tom Waits could’ve dreamed of writing but never came close to.
Disclaimer.
I love Tom Waits.
Pink Bubba.
😂😂😂
I love this song and I dont care who knows it:
That’s an absolute belter.
Plenty of love over here. You can’t beat a bit of Bill. Here is the wonderful Allentown, with the aforementioned Liberty DeVito on drums and Mark Rivera on pipe.
I really like him too. When I lived in USA I saw him live twice and he was great.
Lot of great songs but Matter of Trust from The Bridge is excellent.
There are personal reasons (oh, Caroline, I hope you realise) why I am a fan of Billy, but putting those aside, there are also great musical reasons why I’m a fan. He’s suffered in this country from a sniffy disdain that comes from somewhere rather tawdry I fear. Top musician, great albums.
No thanks. He always seems like a Music for Pleasure / Pickwick facsimile
of Elton John with a touch of Springsteen. Unfortunate resemblance to a pug doesn’t help.
There’s that unattractively tawdry sniffy disdain. Ignorance has many forms.
Well Vincent did ask! And chicks dig pugs, annoyingly.
Well that’s just nitpicking, isn’t it?
I’ve always liked It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me. Anti New Wave New Wave.
Some great songs, but always suffered from extremely poor quality control. I was never totally sold on his occasional excursions into pastiche, but Uptown Girl is certainly the best Four Seasons track that Frankie Valli didn’t sing on.
No love in this house. Neither my wife nor I can stand him.
First heard via Uptown Girl and Tell Her About It – great pop when you’re 13, but not really enduring.
Innocent Man is a great track though.
Heard Piano Man without knowing who it was and I though it was Bob Dylan before the singing started (a harmonica and a folky-ish sound does that).
Some great songs – The Entertainer, New York State Of Mind, Scenes From an Italian Restaurant, My Life.
But It;s Still Rock n Roll To Him.
Also the author of the most unintentional put-down in song:
I don’t want clever conversation
I never want to work that hard
I just want someone that I can talk to
I want you just the way you are
What you’re basically saying Bill is you like your girlfriend to be a bit dense
Dimmer than you are Billy, at any rate.
I like Some of the Billy Joel I know. I like that song, although I prefer Barry White’s version.
I don’t like enough of him to be bothered persisting. Too much other stuff I’m more interested in exploring.
I’m over 66 years old and there’s mountains of other stuff I’ve not heard yet..
Actually, those lyrics describe the necessary ingredients for a lifelong, beautiful marriage. Applies to man or woman, husband or wife, partner to partner, whatever… you got that and your golden.
Just sayin.
Have you ever tried being in a relationship with someone who wants “clever conversation”?
It’s f888ing exhausting!
The Stranger is a great album. I own the super deluxe edition (or whatever it is called these days).
I loved his early 80s stuff as a student but don’t need to listed to them anymore.
He seems a but like the American version of Elton to me. I much prefer his earlier stuff, and it all went a bit pants mid 80s onwards.
My guilty pleasure, though, is All About Soul. Fantastically over produced early 90s pomposity. I love it with a big L. And it reminds me of a girl I used to know….
Yep.
He idolised Lennon but this is none more Macca and utterly fantastic despite uber-familiarity.
Also this. Comes across really well:
I like a lot of his stuff. The Stranger was played a lot when I was at university alongside all the punk and new wave stuff that I was also listening to. My first exposure to him was when Kenny Everett used to do the Breakfast Show and he used to take the mickey out of what he claimed was a bum note at the start which wasn’t present on the version of the song (I think by Doc Brown) that we were more familiar with at the time.
Not relevant but heard some shocking things about how he treats his band members. Can’t recall the details but something like guy plays with him for over 10 years maybe 20 and just gets a message from management – don’t come in tomorrow. That’s it , no thanks for the memories
Always loved this version of NY state of mind
Is that Liberty Devito?
Yes, but others too I thought, but I may be right, I may be wrong.
He has come over as a bit of a New York Jewish dick for the longest time. I agree on the songs you never want to hear again [or didn’t want to hear in the first place], especially We Didn’t Start The Fire, which is so wrong-headed lyrically, musically, everythingly. But he’s written a few corkers too. The megalithic pop opera that is Scenes From An Italian Restaurant has been my eight-beers-and-half-a-bottle-of-malt karaoke bitch since I was old enough to damage my own liver.
…..a bottle of red, a bottle of white, it all depends upon your appetite….
The room swims slightly, and for a moment the chianti bottles crowding the ceiling look like they are pulsing with their own gleeful energy, and I realise I really need another espresso before we leave. Giovanni has already picked up on my caffeine shortage and gesticulates tipping another double down the throat, with raised eyebrows. I smile and give a thumbs up. He’ll be here with the coffee nuke and the bill in around 90 seconds. It’s late, and we have eaten well. She’s sipping the last of her cappuccino, and seems to have enjoyed the evening so far, as have I once again. We’ve been coming to this little Italian place for thirty years or so. We hear Billy play that song on our way here, and we have Just The Way You Are cued up for the drive home. We’re a pair of romantic schmucks, so sue us. Billy is damn well fine with us.
Lovely. But I do hope you weren’t driving.
I can’t think if any other song which features a Brenda in the lyric.
Phenomenal drumming on SFAIR too.
Brenda by Captain Sensible
Brenda’s Iron Sledge by Robyn Hitchcock
❤️
I’m not a huge fan but I have a greatest hits which gets the occasional spin. Song lyrics very rarely work as poems, but can be very good for a line or two, so I can forgive a lot for :
He says, “Son, can you play me a memory
I’m not really sure how it goes
But it’s sad and it’s sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man’s clothes.”
Not a fan, but respect, seems like a decent guy and has talent, but bear with me and in terms of a very brief attempt at Robyn Hitchcock, I’ll stick to the real deal, not a Pound Shop Syd. Saw him on Neil Mackwhotties ‘Needle Drop’ ( yes – him. A grin in gormless suit not saying much at all) and the Robyn song was fucking AWFUL. Live. Him with guitar/voice. I know he’s well loved by many on the alt thingy but he’s a pot noodle equivalent. Dreadful sub Barrett ‘brexit’ nod wink shite. People listen to this talentless arse? (As far as I’m concerned, anyway….)
I love this (amongst others, including The Downeaster Alexa as posted above by Bargepole):
I seem to remember a review (maybe from Q magazine) which raved about the descent from the falsetto in the line “Even though I know the river is wide I walk down every evening and I stand on the shore” and I also think he can be a fine lyricist, in spite of Dai’s comment further up the thread. He’s written some poor lyrics (who hasn’t) and he’s no Paul Simon but there are some good ones as well – Piano Man, Allentown, Downeaster Alexa, Italian Restaurant – and I cannot be the only one to have spent many hours thinking of taking a Greyhound on the Hudson River line (Alicia Keyes doing the honours here)
Listening to this one now…