IT'S BETTER THAN DRINKIN' ALONE: The Official ILM Track-by-Track BILLY JOEL Listening Thread

oooh "she's got a way" as finisher is smart programming. good set.

nice work pplains

actually, "scenes" would make a greeeaaaat closer.

Could’ve been his “Champagne Supernova.”

Good sequencing, but leaving out the "The Stranger" feels like a kick between the eyes

Had to disregard the danger.

Why were you so surprised?

I still wouldn't recommend that comp - or the real one- btw.

But if this is how we get WMJ into the tape decks or the Case Logic visor holders of North America's Toyota vans, then so be it.

Once I used to believe you were such a great compiler.

I'm too afraid to try again, though.

I think it's a great set btw! If one permits "greatest hits" at all to those unlikely or unable to assemble a complete Joel discography, it delivers the goods and obviously was a gateway for many future fans as seen on this thread. Of course it leaves out some ace tracks but his deep cuts were not super-consistent imho. I think the only way you get a better set is to go to three discs, or imagine him as one of those label-jumping artists so that there's a weird early comp in between Turnstiles and The Stranger, another one after Glass Houses, etc. Or, if the double came out *before* An Innocent Man, I guess. But man, growing up without "Uptown Girl" on that cassette...!

Here, feel free to add this one back to the Hits.

https://img.discogs.com/E_7QxzqqAW6np9EqJCacrbWpYgA=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1256010-1204165746.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/swl7vszEUHW9uhYd_-4uraxkpm0=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1256010-1376254683-8868.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/eVNuDdU1GgMbsv3vRhUF618eOJA=/fit-in/600x580/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1256010-1376254693-2352.jpeg.jpg

Following a major tour in 1984 and Joel's marriage to Christie Brinkley, Billy recorded his tenth studio album, The Bridge, at various studios between 1985 and 1986. (Alexa Ray Joel was born in December of '85.) It was released July 28 of the latter year, as the final album to bear the Family Productions logo - god, what a crappy contract provision that was. Supported by another big tour, the record underperformed An Innocent Man while still doing very well, peaking at #7 on the Billboard album charts and producing three top-forty hits with two making it to #10. In the US it was the year's fiftieth best-selling album and has been certified double-platinum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wk0r8CeiKc

Running on Ice opens the album with a nervous, jumpy pastiche of a certain popular act, then recently defunct. The stoop-leaning doo-wop artists have been left far behind - couldn't go back to the greasers, I guess.

One of the catchier Police pastiches, yes, and three years too late. Not terrible, though.

Don't know what you're trying to insinuate there, DC.

https://i.imgur.com/47y63lo.jpg

I think I prefer Weird Al's "Velvet Elvis," but that's after a different aspect of their sound. The later, colder, jitterier sound heard here is more rarely imitated. I like how he even gets the tendency for Sting's choruses to repeat the title of the song as much as humanly possible.

and wau @ pplains link. good idea. we should do an ILM covers project imo.

The Bridge, which I got on vinyl in July at a college radio station giveaway, sounds like contract fulfillment: no unifying style or purpose. You have standard 1986 rockers, a Cyndi Lauper appearance, a Ray Charles duet for fans besotted with An Innocent Man, the obligatory ballad.

I'm still hopeful of finding some gems, but it has to be admitted that the Sirius XM chatter for this one launches almost immediately into:

I was at the point where I was kind of tired of the process of recording - - writing, recording, touring, writing, recording, touring... I didn't have much of a life. And at that point I wanted to have a life, once that baby was born, I wanted to be home. And I hear in the writing on The Bridge a certain reluctance to continue. (...) There are some... not-well-written songs on there, I was in a hurry to get it over with. And that would be similar to the process that happened with Streetlife Serenade. The Bridge has some good stuff on it, but I can also see that there is weak material on that album as well that I'm not that proud of.

I dunno, "Running on Ice" has me hopeful. It's energetic. Reminds me oddly of "Travelin' Prayer" in terms of opening the record with a nice busy, uptempo rhythm. And it's definitely not something we've heard before, so even if the songwriting's not all great on this I'd be into just seeing where he goes sonically with each track.

I admit, though, that "A Matter of Trust" had left me thinking this might be his "guitar album" or something, which would have been an interesting (if possibly bad) move. Doesn't look now like that'll be the case.

Here's Billy basically saying what DC already mentioned above in regard to this record.

Two bonus items here: 1. Half-decent Cyndi Lauper imitation and 2. He might not take shit from no one, but ships on the other hand....

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

huh. hell of a pastiche but i like it!

best part: the post-chorus "you got to run run run run whoaoaaoaaa"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHC3M7KL2ns&feature=youtu.be

He's actually being kind to Cyndi, whose normal speaking voice sounds even more like a parody of itself than Billy's imitation of it.

Billy Joel imitating the Police is a nightmare scenario, a horrible oroborous of regrettable aesthetic decisions

have you heard it?

I made it through the first minute and a half

I'm trying to think of some analogous combo. the Eagles doing U2?

oh come on – it's much better

at worst this tune is innocuous. It's not an embarrassment.

you underestimate my hatred of the Police

the music "the night is still young" TOTALLY sounds like genesis in parts (the music under the chorus)

lol this first song on the bridge really is some Police worship! and not even in the 80s Rush sense where they really made it their own, it's like he's trying to sound like Sting on the verses

As if The Police recorded with Various Positions' engineer. Sounds like French or Soviet pop.

He's trying to sound like Sting, as much as he's previously tried to sound like Ray Charles and Nilsson and McCartney... not like he's trying to sneakily rip something off and have a hit, but like he's dressing in drag. I'm really buying more and more into my "Joel as the first postmodern pop star" theory. He really is most himself and most comfortable writing when he's sitting down to be somebody else.

This would not be one of my favorite Police song though, I'd admit. Giving it a few more listens, we'll see if it becomes a little headsticky.

The opening swirl of keyboards reminds me tremendously of Hall and Oates' "Head Above Water."

"Joel as the first postmodern pop star"

the first? come on now

first good one worthy of the name

bowie was capable of being david bowie. i'm unconvinced billy joel was capable of being billy joel. at the least he should get the "chameleon" credit that bowie and madonna get.

Bowie writes circles around this schmuck

(I'd probably put Dylan and Reed ahead of Bowie in the "firsties" competition fwiw)

i feel like billy is the opposite actually (imo) - he tries on genre and stylistic clothes but his inherent billy joelelocity always overtakes the proceeding

lol @ joelelocity

joelelolzcity

dylan obviously the more significant artist but his very identity as dylan - a carefully-assembled mishmash yes but a comparatively stable and very mythically built-up one - works against him here. album after album he sounds like bob dylan doing bob dylan songs. billy's billyness comes out *despite* his desire to be somebody else, and mainly in his lyrics which often seem to be the least important and conscious aspect of the songs. also in terms of sales and charts he blows dylan completely out of the water (and lou reed isn't even on the same planet, pop star wise)... there's something interesting to me about such a centerless, mutable musical brand name being up there in the top ten all-time bestselling superstar artists. for comparison, in the US at least dylan's down at 44 and bowie doesn't make the top 100.

i mean, it's a deliberate stretch and there's all kinds of problems with it so i don't mind the objections. but i feel like he's been totally misunderstood in some sense. the perception of him as a crowd-pleasing Long Island arena schmuck is far from wrong but he's also basically a pop music fan whose whole discography is cutting demos for specific other artists to cover, or something.

album after album he sounds like bob dylan doing bob dylan songs.

Figured you would say something like this, but I don't think this is accurate at all. For instance, Dylan's vocal delivery and material change dramatically over time, from the shout-y Woody Guthrie-style delivery of the first album to an extended Lefty Frizzel impression a few years later to an album of almost entirely terrible covers just a few years after that. Reed similarly goes all over the place, from aping Dylan to doo-wop to glam to experimental noise music to punk poet. Bowie is in their lineage but even more extreme in the abrupt stylistic shifts.

I will concede that all of these guys have a distinct "voice" and approach - despite all the genre exercises - that Billy doesn't ever really develop, which I think I argued upthread somewhere, although specifically in terms of his lyrics. He is much more firmly a pastiche artist, but what makes him distinctive as one is how *weak* his own voice in in comparison to these other guys (all of whom, as noted, came before him). What is distinct about him is that bitter Long Island schtick, it bleeds through every style he assumes, but there's not much there, it's flimsy and obvious, where Bowie, Reed, and Dylan all better understood mystery and ambiguity.

Like with Bowie, Reed and Dylan (and shit maybe we should throw Neil Young in here too) there's always this balance between being unpredictable and maintaining a certain personal quality. One of them might do a specific genre exercise, but it nonetheless is distinctly *them* doing it, and that tension is where the mystery and the interesting stuff is. Billy sort of disappears into his exercises, where the only real Joelian elements one can discern are usually sloppy lyrics and a certain fussiness with arrangements and rhythms. But there's no mystery there.

Joelocity II

Paul Simon is another point of comparison, writing genre songs in relatively obscure genres, but never hiding either self-awareness or intelligence.

i don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying - but again reed is not a pop star, dylan and bowie are (but not at joel's scale or level of success), and I'm not sure mystery or subjective *quality* are essential requirements of being a postmodern artist.

they aren't essential qualities, but they're why Dylan et al were better at it (and, again, first)

idk why yr disqualifying Reed as a pop star. Certainly not on the level of these other guys, but he did have hits