The Free Press article (see below) is in fact correct in extolling how great and yet how overly criticized is the music of Billy Joel. I agree with author Eli Lake, though Joel’s music is hardly unrecognized: you can hear it on all the “oldie” radio stations. Right off the bat I can name three all-time classics written and recorded by Joel: “Piano Man,” “Uptown Girl, ” and, my favorite, “Only the Good Die Young”, a work of genius about trying to court a parentally cloistered Catholic girl. In fact, let’s hear that one right now. The words are clever and the tune original and memorable. I’ve put a live video below, but you can also hear the recorded version here.
If you have a subscription to the Free Press, you can read Eli Lake’s anodyne piece by clicking below (it’s not archived), but also hear about the rock greats who consider Joel a genius. I agree. Where Eli Lake goes wrong is his list of other bands that he ranks up there with Joel, and there he’s just dead wrong. He also dismisses bands that were great, like the Eagles.
A few quotes:
Rock music is a fickle thing. There are some artists who will be forever cool like Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, or Nirvana. And then there are the unapologetic sellouts, the stars that sold a stew of pabulum and clichés to millions of eager sheep. The Eagles or Electric Light Orchestra come to mind. These are the frauds whose insipid compositions inspired a new generation of punk rockers to burn down all that came before them.
“Frauds”? FRAUDS? This is where I began to suspect that Lake doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I agree with the Electric Light Orchestra being pabulum, but The Eagles? Well, this is all about taste, of course, but I’ll claim that several Eagles songs are classics, and these include “Lyin’ Eyes”, “I Can’t Tell You Why“, and “The Boys of Summer” (granted, it’s by Don Henley and not his Eagles, but it’s still a wonderful song about growing older).
Here’s my favorite, “Lyin’ Eyes”, about a woman, married to an uncaring older man, having an adulterous affair.
As for Elvis Costello, meh, and I never got into Nirvana. Now I grant that, as a proportion of total musical output that was great, Joel edges out the Eagles, but dismissing their music as “pabulum” is stupid and ignorant. (I will admit that “Hotel California” is dreadful.)
Anyway, I’ve defended the Eagles, so let’s see what the article says, correctly, about the quality of Joel’s music:
The bard from Hicksville, Long Island [Joel], hated the critics who looked down their noses at him. He used to rip up their reviews onstage and encourage his adoring fans to boo them. And after more than 50 years of taking their slings and arrows Joel has achieved his revenge in a two-part HBO documentary that aired on July 18 and July 25. And So It Goes, named after one of the deep cuts from his 1989 Storm Front album, is littered with interviews from a slew of recording artists universally acknowledged as rock’s gods. And whaddya know, all of them can’t shower enough praise on Billy Joel.
“Billy’s melodies are better than mine,” says Bruce Springsteen. Paul McCartney reveals that Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” is a song he wished he had written.
Most astonishing of all, Nas, one of hip-hop’s titans, couldn’t stop gushing about one of Billy Joel’s schmaltziest hits, “Piano Man,” with its lilting waltz rhythm and poignant sketches of the barflies Joel encountered when he played at a dive bar in Los Angeles. “‘Piano Man’ is a mirror facing a mirror,” the rapper says. “You can just see infinite reflections.”
He’s right. The lyrics of “Piano Man” are sheer poetry.
I will try to find and watch that HBO documentary, though “Just The Way You Are” and “Uptown Girl” are not exactly how Lake later describes Joel’s music:
Great music finds an audience. And Billy Joel found his. He did not invent a new style. He did not pioneer a new recording process or write songs that sparked a revolution. Like so many great writers, he wrote what he knew, which in his case was the angst and heartbreak of middle-class late-20th-century suburban life.
Here Lake is just phoning it in. Does he know that “Uptown Girl” is about Joel’s romances with Christie Brinkley, whom he later married, and Elle MacPherson? That hardly shows “the angst and heartbreak of middle-class suburban life”, for Joel wouldn’t even have had relationships with those lovely women had he not been famous for his music. Yes, in the song he takes on the persona of a “backstreet guy,” but there’s no angst in that song. Nor is there any in “Just the Way You Are,” which, while excellent, is a conventional love song. (Listen to it here.)
I think the Free Press needs a better critic of rock music. Like maybe somebody (unlike Lake) who has spent their life listening to and writing about rock music? I can hear it now ringing across the Free Press Newsroom as Bari Weiss calls: “Hey, Eli, there’s a new HBO special on Billy Joel. Could you write something about it for us?