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

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.

http://www.morethings.com/music/billy_joel/billy-joel-snl-1978-15.jpg

http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000DR5GcLvTbDE/s/650/650/behr-BillyJoel-10399-7.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BefCZ7DByaM/TGEO7wL5uCI/AAAAAAAAAI0/yRM65vHBGWA/s320/billy+joel+-+say+goodbye+to+hollywood.jpg

Basically, I think I should start seriously brushing up on my keyboard skills and start a Billy Joel cover band.

I nominate Doctor Casino's above post for Best Music Writing 2012.

haha awww, thanks. You should have seen the earlier, accidentally deleted version ;_;

D.C. hits it on the head. I get why folks are tired of hearing "Uptown Girl" in the supermarket, but there's a package there that you don't get just with the singles. (Which is why I don't like this comp.)

People always try to cram Joel into this weird Dylan>>>>Springsteen>>>>>Tom Petty>>>>>Bob Seger American singer/songwriter thing, but he's more akin to someone like Nick Lowe or Nilsson. His schtick isn't so much trying to save the world as it is trying to save himself.

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.

I could play this game too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6YMdZdD9iQ

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

Thinking my next gig will be selling ads for the Yellow Pages.

Nilsson/Joel is a great comparison - kind of feel like they reached a similar juncture of potential and Nilsson, through circumstance and also choice, decided he'd rather put on warped puppet-shows in the attic than maintain the focus needed to keep writing hit-worthy songs. I like them both a lot, mind you, but almost immediately after Schmilsson Nilsson becomes a connoisseurs-only kind of guy, whereas Joel seemed to take The Stranger as "oh, fucking FINALLY, okay, let's keep this thing going now."

Hall & Oates also very similar to the Joel career arc, and (given that ILM has previously gone out of its way to compare Darryl Hall and Billy Joel's lyrical personas), it's odd that they don't get paired more often in the conventional wisdom. Trucking along for ages, finding their particular hit sound, having an early-career hit record or two that never quite turned into a smash, then finally HAVING a smash and getting a good 3-4 albums of solid followup out of it...

Joel showing up in his coat and tie to Nilsson's apartment, getting on to him for still wearing his robe at 9 pm, both of them wondering if they should go to Elaine's or the Village Green.

Kinda was hoping for another post to have been made between when I started writing that and when I hit submit.

Nick Lowe is a terrible comparison to Billy Joel. But sure, I can see Nilsson. When I think of Joel, though, I think stubby little fingers, which is my shorthand way of suggesting he worked his ass off to get where he got, vs. someone more sui generis like Nilsson. I think a closer comparison to Joel might be, dunno, early Coug?

If this were a Defend the Indefensible thread, I would totally cite Billy Joel's awesome use of session guys. Phil Woods!

^^^

Sometimes I think of Joel as being like the John McEnroe of music, ie, never far from throwing a tantrum. Elton's the same in many ways.

Joel and Lowe both authors of bouncy little songs in the late 70s/early 80s. Both carry that self-refrential loser appeal. Both have a sense of humor. I can totally hear Billy Joel singing "What's So Funny?" or Lowe doing "Sleeping With the Television On".

I was thinking about Cougar when I was thinking of the usual pantheon of American singer/songwriters. If you think "I Need A Lover" sounds like Joel, I would respectively ask for you to make sure that you aren't thinking about Eddie Money in this thread.

It's all about Liberty DeVitto, guys.

(I'm such a fucking internet geek when it comes to this man.)

you should all be ashamed of yourselves. what's next, repping for the Eagles?

Fuck no.

I will take that bullet.

Hall & Oates also very similar to the Joel career arc, and (given that ILM has previously gone out of its way to compare Darryl Hall and Billy Joel's lyrical personas), it's odd that they don't get paired more often in the conventional wisdom. Trucking along for ages, finding their particular hit sound, having an early-career hit record or two that never quite turned into a smash, then finally HAVING a smash and getting a good 3-4 albums of solid followup out of it...

I've thought about the comparison but it crumbles when you consider how well Hall has sung his entire career -- through bad production decisions and indifferent songwriting. Whereas when Joel's bad or pedestrian, which is often, he's a cold meatball.

xxxxxp mm indeed and when he *does* throw a tantrum.. yikes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqY6mXULzpw

That keytar player!

Actually, that's pro shot. Where the hell was it from?

USSR. He didn't want the film crew turning the lights on the shy audience.

I remember hearing back in the late 80s that he flipped out and threw a piano(!) in the former USSR because the Soviets, after years of oppression, were afraid to rock out in concerts.

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

― pplains, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 3:08 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

lol

you should all be ashamed of yourselves. what's next, repping for the Eagles?

oh hell yeah. they're no billy joel, granted, but i'll stand for at least 10 songs off their vol I&II greatest hits.

and if it weren't for the eagles, there would be no "life's been good", so...

yeah the piano toss was in Russia. you forget late 80s bands *really did look like that*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIVrrof6ODA

listening to De La Soul and just heard a Billy Joel sample. Fuck you haters.

sampling it doesn't make it better

You rarely hear John Cougar being sampled unless it's Jack & Diane

Thank you thread for reminding me of that horrible Jack & Diane sampling thing by Jessica Simpson.

listening to Nylon Curtain: Laura is awesome.

NOTICE: there will be no repping for The Eagles in MY poll thread. Take it elsewhere, freaks...

:)

also Alfred otm about Joel vs Hall.

Funny that "The Long Run" was also (along with Glass Houses) one of my first record purchases. Apparently I got money *and* access to Korvettes in 1979. Oh, and without looking it up and without having heard it in a million years: "She wants to hit those bricks, 'cause the news at six got to stick to a deadline." Great song. I recall it seeming extra refreshing after the french lesson that preceded it...

It never occurred to me that BJ might have demos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oG8vobuAIg

You can kind of imagine Lou Reed doing something with this...

man yall like what you like it's all good but this guy is one of the worst lyricists of all time, and the problem's compounded by his basic meter & rhyme skills - which aren't bad, thereby throwing the paucity of his content into high relief

well yeah this is a guy whose idea of a couplet is "You can go the distance/with too much resistance," sung as if he were having heart trouble.

Crazy people. Tell me that this ain't poetry:

Me revoici
Dans ce bar enfume
Avec mes yeux ivres

It's in French, for fuck's sake...

I mean, yeah: Michelle, ma belle, you smell. Big deal:

Je recherche l'affection
Qu'une autre pourrait me donner
Mais apres tout
Je sais qu'il n'y a personne
Personne qui puisse me sauver
Tu etais la seule

It doesn't even rhyme. How cool is that! Oh, maybe I'd better just translate that on the next verse.

Dude, he's a populist. His skill as a lyricist is that he knows what emotional state he's trying to sell and how to swagger it where it needs it so that people identify with it. "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints" - Shakespeare it ain't but it's memorable and it's perfectly appropriate for the song's character and situation.

I like Billy Joel's lyrics. Not all of them, certainly, but enough to count. They're simple, and they invite easy identification. They pick out the emotions in big bold strokes, the rhymes and rhythms underlined in red so you can sing along at home. They cut a little, maybe, but never too deep. That's not such a bad thing.

I love "Miami 2017", for instance. It's a juvenile apocalypse, drunk on romantic rebellion and defeat, a blur of places and names dipped in cheap cynicism and set alight. Whatever the fuel, it roars right along, the verses always ending on an open 'oh', 'ah' or 'ee' so he (we) can wantonly belt the Big Note to the stars. It's a fun song, engagingly clever without being terribly insightful, subtle or even particularly honest. It's a fantasy of youthful war against vast powers, of survival in the bombed-out remains. But what of it? Sometimes a megaphone and a match do the job just fine.

It reminds me of two other, more generally well-respected songs that I like in a similar way: Leonard Cohen's "First We Take Manhattan" and Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime". I guess I'm a sucker for doomy, paranoid and slightly hysterical rebel fantasies. The edge on Joel's satirical knife might be a little dull, relatively speaking, but the general gist and tone aren't too far off. And Billy beat them guys to the punch by a matter of years.

Richly OTM.

Yeah, except the Leonard Cohen and Talking Heads song have menacing music that matches the lyrical mode. They're not some hoaky serenade set to some ersatz Elton boilerplate. Maybe if you're totally immersed in Joel's lyrics I'd theoretically concede your point, but the Leonard Cohen and Heads songs are both funnier and scarier. They sound like the world is ending as you're listening, and they're singing as the ship goes down. Miami 2017 sounds like some "we can do it!" celebration crossed with a nightly entertainment news theme.

It's the death blow of the middle of the road. Even when you win, you lose.

Dude, he's a populist. His skill as a lyricist is that he knows what emotional state he's trying to sell and how to swagger it where it needs it so that people identify with it. "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints" - Shakespeare it ain't but it's memorable and it's perfectly appropriate for the song's character and situation.

Shakespeare is a populist FYI. You don't have to be terrible to be a populist.