An Explaination Part 2

Oof sorry this took longer to write then I thought and I still am not sure it is any good.

So what exactly about Billy Joel’s music makes people hate it? I think it is the complete lack of irony in his music. He is direct and honest. With any of his songs you can guarantee he felt that way when writing it. When he wrote “Piano Man” he was just one more lonely person in a bar of losers at a dead end in life (at the time he was working at the piano bar to wait out a bad contract). When he wrote “Allentown” he was concerned about the working class of those steel and coal towns that were facing difficulties. The hipsters of today can’t believe that people can be so direct without being ironic. You can’t be a balladeer with out mocking the form. You need to be a Bruce Springsteen who hides his mockery of the working class and chest beating patriotism behind a sound and image that makes him THE working class hero. You need to be John Lennon’s “Imagine” and not Paul McCarthy’s “Silly Love Song” or George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”.

Romanticism is a big part of understanding Joel’s music. His music is not here to analyze but to just be understood upon listening. “River of Dreams” is a very religious sounding song and includes lines about the “Jungle of doubt” and Mountains of Faith”. Now these are not actual references they are just there to give the feel of spirituality. Joel is not a literary master like Nick Cave so he doesn’t try and be. It is not surprising that he writes his music first and then writes the lyrics (the exception being “We Didn’t Start the Fire” which is why the melody on that one is pretty much nonexistent).

Okay I need to take some time out here to address something that has been bugging as I do research about why people hate Billy Joel. Stop talking about “She’s Always a Woman to Me”, just stop! Have you ever actually listened to the song? You are trying to do it in a critical way and you say you don’t like it and that is fine but seriously stop calling it misogynist. If you are going to analyze the music that is very subjective and emotional but if you are going to start commenting on the lyrics it is time to show you actually understand what is being said. We live in a world were there are traits that are feminine and masculine, and a lot of these things are not based on society but on some preprogramming in our brains. This song is telling a woman who many consider a bitch that she isn’t; that she still can be successful without sacrificing her feminine traits for masculine ones. (I could write an essay on the way most feminist act and how they are actually hurting the cause of making feminine and masculine equal and are instead discarding feminine and making themselves masculine but this is about Billy Joel not that so lets move on).

Another thing I have heard against Billy Joel is how much they don’t like his voice. Well I find that a little hard to believe because he doesn’t have “a voice” he shapes his voice to the song he wants to sing. (Here is a great clip of him talking about how everyone is trying to sing like Ray Charles). He is a great interpreter of musical styles, as seen on the album An Innocent Man and the incorporation of Beethoven’s “Sonata Pathétique” into “This Night”.

His music is also a snap shot of his life and mind set something that makes him very accessible. It is fascinating and real instead of abstract and far away. I am going to mention a song of each of his albums and what they show us
On “Tomorrow is Today” he is a suicidal (was actually a suicide note he wrote) early twenty something that is deciding if it is worth it all
On “Piano Man” he is lounge player Bill Martin who keeps getting told he is to good to be here but knows this is the only way he can get out
On “The Entertainer” he is a traveling musician that knows what needs to be done to make it and has no illusion about how fickle fame is
Then you get to Turnstiles with “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” and “New York State of Mind” and you see this estranged son of New York ready to come home.
With “Vienna” we get a man who realizes that growing old isn’t something to be scared of as long as there is a place we can still be useful (inspired by him seeing an old woman sweeping the streets when visiting his Dad in Vienna and upon asking why this old woman was sweeping the street being told “She has a job and feels useful and needed”)
“It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” again finds him thinking about his relevance and trying to stay up to date without sacrificing what he likes about music
On Nylon Curtain Billy Joel shows his sympathy for those he can’t fully relate to anymore but still wants to try and understand on both “Allentown” and “Goodnight Saigon”
All of An Innocent Man is nostalgic to the nth degree, recreating sounds of Joel’s youth by the likes of Frankie Valli and Smokie Robinson
The Bridge is Joel in a creative dry spell needing to bring on guest stars such as his hero Ray Charles on “Baby Grand”
“We Didn’t Start The Fire” is Joel looking over his life and realizing how much has happened since he was born
And Finally we have what I think is the most touching song Joel every wrote “Lullaby (Goodnight My Angel)” a lullaby he wrote for his daughter Alexa after she asked him about death when Joel was putting her to bed.

This isn’t the best thing I have ever written, there was no way it could be. I am here to defend how I feel about Billy Joel’s music and I doubt I will ever be able to convince those that don’t like him to come over to my way of thinking. So who knows if this is convincing, or relevant, or even coherent but it is all I can do. Just do me a favor, before you judge Joel put on something besides his Greatest Hits. Listen to the second half of Glass Houses, 52nd Street or Cold Spring Harbor. Don’t judge after “Just the Way You Are” listen to “Falling of the Rain”, “Half a Mile Away”, “All for Leyna”, “Vienna” and “Lullaby”. If you still don’t like him then leave him but he is my favorite and expect to see his music show up here again.