Credit: Far Out / Columbia Records
Sat 5 September 2026 17:30, UK
Billy Joel has never been the kind of musician who has been considered “cool” in the eyes of music critics.
Even though he loved to play music and was more than willing to make songs that veered off in different directions, none of his adventurous records seemed to give him a shred of street cred, even when earning the respect of some of his fellow rock and roll heavyweights. Because as much as Joel wanted to be the best entertainer he could be, there were always going to be subtle things that held him back from being inherently cool.
But who the hell cares about earning points with critics? What mattered the most was the music at the end of the day, and even if the biggest hits of his career started to turn things around on The Stranger, it’s not like he was given a formal apology from people trying to drag him down. The hip side of culture didn’t like him all that much, but you’d have to be a fool not to think that ‘Just The Way You Are’ has some of the most complex chord changes to ever appear in a pop song.
Maybe it was because he was a bit dorky, or maybe he was a bit too much of a musician’s musician for the masses, but either way, Joel didn’t care. He was going to keep pressing on, no matter what people thought of him, and every one of his records was at least an interesting look into a new sound. 52nd Street was a jazz album, Glass Houses was a new wave record, and Storm Front was practically an arena rock take on his sound, but the greatest songwriters of his generation tended to look a little different.
Because if anything, rock and roll has always been centred around the guitar more than any other instrument. There aren’t many people who could look as badass as Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page did when they were shredding through their solos, and Joel seemed to already be at a disadvantage when he had that massive piano in front of him onstage. And while he repped for New York like no one else, Bruce Springsteen was going to be given the preferential treatment most of the time.
‘The Boss’ had already started getting the moniker of the new Bob Dylan when he first started making his tunes, and there were more than a few songs that seemed destined to be classics. ‘Born to Run’ was among the finest songs to come out of the 1970s, and while Joel had his fair share of hits just as good as that, he felt that Springsteen’s lyrics were what gave him an edge that he didn’t have.
Joel has always been candid about how hard it was to write lyrics, and he felt that Springsteen was always going to be ahead of him in some regard because of that, saying, “Bruce was also a wordsmith, and critics are wordsmiths. So he had that going for him. I never resented the good press that Bruce got. He deserved it. I was just never about the words first. I wrote the music, then the words. To me, the words – sometimes I don’t give a fuck.”
Further reading: From The Vault
For all the years of playing second fiddle to him, though, it’s not like Joel harboured any resentments towards his friend, either. If anything, he had to gawk in amazement at some of those songs as well, and when listening to a tune like ‘Meeting Across the River’, he could see the same kind of allure that everyone else saw in the patron saint of New Jersey whenever he started singing.
Here was someone who was writing about small-town living in a way that he recognised in an instant, and while he didn’t like getting snubbed a few too many times, it’s hardly a reason to be angry when looking at a legend like him. Springsteen was speaking for everyone whenever he played, and Joel wasn’t about to claim that he could do the same thing every single time he got up to the microphone.
