Say Goodbye To POLLywood - Billy Joel Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II, THE POLL

Does Billy Joel have worthwhile album tracks? Serious question. Elton def does.

Well, if Sometimes a Fantasy or Sleeping w/the Television On or She's Right On Time were options here, it would be a lot tougher. xp

Yes, Alfred. He's got some filler, but I'd say there's usually around four songs on each album that never gets play just as quality as the singles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaSbplT9O6c

Well, if Sometimes a Fantasy or Sleeping w/the Television On or She's Right On Time were options here, it would be a lot tougher. xp

Is this a good place to talk about my sick fascination with "Close To The Borderline?"

Everytime I walk down an alley, I hear that riff.

"The bag ladies throw their bones in my face."

xp not at all! I always loved that song just for using the phrase "a buck three-eighty," which was one my dad used to use as well. (Must be an NY thing.)

Enjoying listening to An Innocent Man

'Christie Lee' is a bit of a bung note for me. That's about the only one so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70trlkdNtLw

"moonlighting" did an opening to that too.

I think Joel despises "Modern Woman" – he says so often.

re: worthwhile album tracks, "Laura" is the jam, which I wouldn't have recalled had it not been for Chuck Klosterman's two Billy Joel profiles..

for me, a lot of his album tracks were just as ubiquitous from grammar school throughout high school.. there was a point when I was ready to kill the next kid in music class who would bust into the "Angry Young Man" piano intro.. I also used to love "Root Beer Rag" which I can no longer listen to.

a lot of the best ones appear on "Songs In The Attic" and sound better than the original versions, ie "Miami 2017" and "Los Angelenos," although "The Ballad of Billy the Kid" is kinda painful.. "Travelin' Prayer" is aight... I think Dolly Parton covered it or something.

IMO any of these could have just as easily fit onto his greatest hits just as well as Goodnight Saigon.

In the old Columbia House ads, there was always a † next to Nylon Curtain because the word "fucking" is used in "Laura". Billy Joel badass.

Nobody in my class listened to Billy Joel. I'm not sure even how I got started on him. One of my fondest memories though is being in 4th grade and holding hands with a girl named Susan underneath a table in the back of the room, listening to "Honesty" while everyone else was out at recess.

yeah maybe it's the teenager in me but "feeling like a fucking fool" is my favorite part of that song

also he sounds more pissed off than usual in that one... which for Billy Joel is "really pissed off"

As album titles go, Nylon Curtain has got to be up there with some of the bad ones. Just seems kinda, ill-advised.

He had just divorced his first wife (the one "Just the Way You Are" is about) and apparently, she got her fair share of "Just the Way You Are" royalties.

It wasn't long after Nylon Curtain that he made Christie Brinkley in some piano bar in the Caribbean. He was serenading her, Elle Macpherson and WHITNEY HOUSTON.

After that night, he started dating … ELLE MACPHERSON. It wouldn't be later that he'd be all "oh, hey, what's up Christie Lee?" </player>

The Hassles album is on Youtube as one complete video.... hm.. well if you can find "Just Holding On" by The Hassles, I like that one also. (way better than Attila IMO)

I didn't know that he dated Elle McPherson. Damn.

actually it's only at 1:41 into this...
I think this was Billy Joel's first album that he appeared on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsT7aHhCHbU

Oh yeah, Songs In The Attic is definitely worth it for those curious about album-track Joel. I would add that version of "Everybody Loves You Now."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qSNcgJtqzw

Great thing too is that basically every Joel album through An Innocent Man is piled up in vinyl dollar bins nationwide so you're not out much.

I dunno if it was the AMG review impressing upon me early on that Nylon Curtain was his VERY SERIOUS album but I've somehow never been able to really go for it. Bit of a chore last time I put it on, but also I have crappy speakers right now and basically everything sounds awful so who knows.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-hasnt-told-coworkers-about-his-billy-joel,1582/

It gets its reputation for being VERY SERIOUS thanks to Side 1, but it gets loose on Side 2 with "Room of Our Own" (should be played at every wedding) and "She's Right on Time".

Another piece of trivia: Brinkley's only the second-hottest woman to appear in a Billy Joel video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4lh4Ahl46E&ob=av2n

oh god his singing on "Modern Woman" defines "prostrate operation"

and btw, wow, I have never gotten around to checking out the Hassles before, kind of amazing. Definitely more listenable than Attila, but that doesn't really take much.

http://www.amoeba.com/dynamic-images/blog/Chad/niceprice.jpg

Re: "Modern Woman," there's got to be something to be said of a Billy Joel song so horrible even Billy Joel hates it.

What's always bugged me about this dude was his bitterness, like he truly believed at heart he was better than middlebrow and hated himself for getting rich without ever shirking that albatross. He's like an inexplicably angry little Springsteen wannabe who sees himself a street fighter poet but who others see as a safe joke. Or maybe that's just what the alcohol did to him

I don't think Billy Joel has ever tried to put on airs to be a street fighter poet, at least since The Stranger. He doesn't seem to take himself that seriously.

Check this out where Joel sounds more like 1975 Bruce than Bruce does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78qF8haa3mo

and this. just this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZq5hy2RsvM

He doesn't seem to take himself that seriously anymore, but again, I think that may be the alcohol and self-loathing at work.

What's always bugged me about this dude was his bitterness, like he truly believed at heart he was better than middlebrow and hated himself for getting rich without ever shirking that albatross. He's like an inexplicably angry little Springsteen wannabe who sees himself a street fighter poet but who others see as a safe joke. Or maybe that's just what the alcohol did to him

Jonah Goldberg?

Oh there's plenty of alcohol and self-loathing. Surprised Paul Westerberg never went the supermodel route.

Didn't he date Wynona for a while?

(I know, who didn't, right?)

Thought of that around 12:53 my time.

it was Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum who dated Winona.

who also dated Winona.

Its clear Joel doesnt know the words, as hes litterally staring at the lyric monitor off screen
rypro525 9 months ago

Of course he didn't know the words, he hates rehearsing ("more edge" with less rehearsing) and this was pretty spontaneous.
Try singing Bruce song, in Bruce key/range, also in Bruce voice in perfect pitch (!!) while simultaneously playing the piano by EAR and see how you do ;.) 
Trust me, NO other talent is capable of making adsjustments like that. NO ONE else. Most under rated talent in the history of Earth.
PS "Virginia" was intentional.
4lifeserendipity in reply to rypro525 3 weeks ago

NO ONE else

oh youtube

Christ Bruce's voice is in good shape

Bruce is a force of nature. Billy is just sort of ... forced.

Dude, I don't c&p your off-board comments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHtWWQzUgRY

jesus, the post I just wrote and lost, you guys have no idea of the genius

Guys, I just listened to The Stranger in its entirety and I'll give you this: "Everybody Has A Dream" is horrid.

If I still worked in a recording studio, I'd make it a mission to collect 100 reprises from the 70s for a CD comp.

Though right now, the only mini ones I can think of are "Band on the Run" and "The Stranger".

Probably better I work at a newspaper now, I guess.

Okay so basically - - - my feeling is that up until he got old, gained weight, lost his tumbling 70s locks and started looking and acting like an entitled rich guy with contempt for his fans, he had this really convincing match-up between his own look-and-feel (tics, fashion, visual associations generally) and the material of his songs, which added up are like the ten-year story of a grouchy, alcoholic New Yorker with contempt for everyone and years in the trenches playing shitty house-pianist gigs and relentless touring to back it up. If he were a lesser songwriter that'd just leave him as a memorable grump with a predictable cult, but the thing is his songs were really really earwormy and he had a genuinely solid backing band, great producer, and somehow wedded all the baggage of his persona to something you would kind of relate to. Joel never casts himself as the sad-sack you're rooting for - he's the underdog you think of yourself being, who actually tells the boss off and skips town and rages against the phonies and hangs around in scuzzy alleyways with a saxophone because after so many Friday nights in this city, man, you get over trying to be in the coolest places at the coolest times. It just works as a package, and even if the songs had stayed as strong, the rest falls apart completely once he gets an MTV budget and a huge arena stage with a vast battleship of a piano.

So An Innocent Man is the last solid moment not just because it has his last amazing grab-bag of singles ("Uptown Girl" is in my top five for this poll), but because it completes the character arc: the boomer settles down, actually delivers on the claim way back in "Angry Young Man" that he's over it all (or the "got a new wife" narrator of "Italian Restaurant"), and nestles in with some well-delivered nostalgia. Would have been a perfect album to retire on - but of course you don't retire at age 35 with three top ten hits.

And Greatest Hits I & II is in this sense the perfect Joel album because it gets the whole sweep of that, but just jumbles up the order so it makes a consistent melange of bitterness, redeemed bitterness, righteous bitterness, bitterness hoping to be proved wrong, and trying to get into girls' pants. No wonder it's such great house-cleaning music (I was doing dishes to Joel just the other day).

<3 pplains's last two posts

Probably better I work at a newspaper now, I guess.

it's rare than anyone could use that phrase, except when they leave the one industry that's probably doing even worse

Anyone ever notice that Bruce Springsteen's "Hungry Heart" could pass as a Billy Joel song? It would probably fit a lot better in the Billy Joel catalog too.