{"id":97974,"date":"2025-07-27T23:56:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T23:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/97974\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T23:56:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T23:56:13","slug":"the-free-press-defends-the-music-of-billy-joel-why-evolution-is-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/97974\/","title":{"rendered":"The Free Press defends the music of Billy Joel \u2013 Why Evolution Is True"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 I agree with author Eli Lake, though Joel\u2019s music is hardly unrecognized: you can hear it on all the \u201coldie\u201d radio stations.\u00a0 Right off the bat I can name three all-time classics written and recorded by Joel: \u201cPiano Man,\u201d \u201cUptown Girl, \u201d and, my favorite, \u201cOnly the Good Die Young\u201d, a work of genius about trying to court a parentally cloistered Catholic girl. In fact, let\u2019s hear that one right now.\u00a0 The words are clever and the tune original and memorable. I\u2019ve put a live video below, but you can also hear the recorded version here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

If you have a subscription to the Free Press, you can read Eli Lake\u2019s anodyne piece by clicking below (it\u2019s 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\u2019s just dead wrong.\u00a0 He also dismisses bands that were great, like the Eagles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A few quotes:<\/p>\n

\n

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 clich\u00e9s 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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cFrauds\u201d? FRAUDS?\u00a0 This is where I began to suspect that Lake doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about.<\/p>\n

I agree with the Electric Light Orchestra being pabulum, but The Eagles? Well, this is all about taste, of course, but I\u2019ll claim that several Eagles songs are classics, and these include \u201cLyin\u2019 Eyes\u201d, \u201cI Can\u2019t Tell You Why<\/a>\u201c, and \u201cThe Boys of Summer<\/a>\u201d (granted, it\u2019s by Don Henley and not his Eagles, but it\u2019s still a wonderful song about growing older).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my favorite, \u201cLyin\u2019 Eyes\u201d, about a woman, married to an uncaring older man, having an adulterous affair.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As for Elvis Costello, meh, and I never got into Nirvana.\u00a0 Now I grant that, as a proportion of total musical output that was great, Joel edges out the Eagles, but dismissing their music as \u201cpabulum\u201d is stupid and ignorant.\u00a0\u00a0(I will admit that \u201cHotel California\u201d is dreadful.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, I\u2019ve defended the Eagles, so let\u2019s see what the article says, correctly, about the quality of Joel\u2019s music:<\/p>\n

\n

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<\/a>\u00a0that aired on July 18 and July 25.\u00a0And So It Goes, named after one of the deep cuts from his 1989\u00a0Storm Front\u00a0album, is littered with interviews from a slew of recording artists universally acknowledged as rock\u2019s gods. And whaddya know, all of them can\u2019t shower enough praise on Billy Joel.<\/p>\n

\u201cBilly\u2019s melodies are better than mine,\u201d says Bruce Springsteen. Paul McCartney reveals that Joel\u2019s \u201cJust the Way You Are\u201d is a song he wished he had written.<\/p>\n

Most astonishing of all, Nas, one of hip-hop\u2019s titans, couldn\u2019t stop gushing about one of Billy Joel\u2019s schmaltziest hits, \u201cPiano Man,\u201d with its lilting waltz rhythm and poignant sketches of the barflies Joel encountered when he played at a dive bar in Los Angeles. \u201c\u2018Piano Man\u2019 is a mirror facing a mirror,\u201d the rapper says. \u201cYou can just see infinite reflections.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s right. The lyrics of \u201cPiano Man\u201d are sheer poetry.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I will try to find and watch that HBO documentary, though \u201cJust The Way You Are\u201d and \u201cUptown Girl\u201d are not exactly how Lake later describes Joel\u2019s music:<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here Lake is just phoning it in. Does he know that \u201cUptown Girl\u201d is about Joel\u2019s romances with Christie Brinkley, whom he later married, and Elle MacPherson? That hardly shows \u201cthe angst and heartbreak of middle-class suburban life\u201d, for Joel wouldn\u2019t 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 \u201cbackstreet guy,\u201d but there\u2019s no angst in that song. Nor is there any in \u201cJust the Way You Are,\u201d which, while excellent, is a conventional love song. (Listen to it here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I think the Free Press needs a better critic of rock music. Like maybe somebody (unlike Lake<\/a>) 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: \u201cHey, Eli, there\u2019s a new HBO special on Billy Joel. Could you write something about it for us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Free Press article (see below) is in fact correct in extolling how great and yet how overly…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":97975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,975,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-97974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114927906912183804","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}