Search And Destroy: Billy Joel

destroy - uptown girl, just the way you are

had a friend who bored me to deth with BJ

Search: Piano Man, Pressure and the daddy of list records (We Didn't Start The Fire). Destroy: Captain Jack

Just stop it. Now. Please. The broken CD player line is no longer viable.

You will all be sorry, wait till I get that Blue Aeroplanes CD "stuck" in there.

Search: Anthony's Song. Probably You May Be Right, too.

Destroy: Uptown Fucking Girl. And Westlife too.

But two Johnnie Walker Saturday Sequence Artists in one day on ILM - shurely shome mishtake :) ?

I'll allow for a glimmer here and there. I no longer actively loathe the man, but that's because he's so conveniently disappeared.

As for that Westlife cover, the Focus Group standings will say it all, I'm sure.

"Uptown Girl" = Reaganite ? How so ?

Everything else is really vile, almost as disgusting as 90's Bryan Adams. Let's review... Piano Man is so pompous and overblown it's hysterical (so it is good in a weird way). Still Rock and Roll To Me sounds like Jann Wenner's personal manifesto, which means it is automatically a tool of Satan. You can imagine backward masking in there urging the listener to stick to AOR. Westlife saw fit to record Uptown Girl -- enough said. We Didn't Start the Fire is just a very poor rip of REM's It's the End of the World as We Know It, which is not that great a song in the first place -- just a gimmicky review of World Events that's not constructed very well. In the Rhythm of the Night is the kind of thing that Starbucks patrons wank to in their bathrooms. And thankfully he's not been heard from much since then.

And he's the ugliest man to ever work in pop music to boot.

Lemmy (as Beavis & Butthead noted) has a cocoa puff on the side of his face, but other than that he's just hairy.

Shane is butt ugly, but I would argue that Billy is uglier. It's that pushed in pig snout that seals the title up for him. Plus you get the feeling he thinks he's attractive, whereas Shane is too drunk to ever take note either way.

Billy - my THEORY is that if you'd had been french, pissed yourself and done more reggae we'd forget the bags beneath your eyes

However, I'm sure I remember seeing a pic of a sub-vanilla fudge duo BJ used to be in, IIRC, the cover was BJ and the other guy (a drummer? or was BJ the drummer?) standing in an abbatoir - I think it was called "attilla the hun" or something like that. I'd like to hear that.

x0x0

"Uptown Girl" is just whingeing nostalgia, not openly reactionary politics, but the kind of thing said politics legitimise.

For the record, the only Billy Joel songs which will not cause me to lunge in fury at the radio/stereo are "Allentown" and "Pressure".

Destroy that.

But, okay, now the best part (rubbing hands):

Destroy: Piano Man for being the inescapable modern version of "Oh My Darling Clementine", Keeping the Faith (Bruce S = we gotta get out of the streets of New Jersey because your dad don't like me, Billy J = I once hung with the tough crowd and made my share of mistakes but hey look at me I'm doing all right now and do you mind if I get a bit preachy on ya?), We Didn't Fucking Start the Fire (great editorial I once read around the time of its release saying how shallow the song was and suggesting we could use its goofy template to teach Science classes: "E = MC squared, mammals are the ones with hair, ozone, pheremone, fiber optic telephone"), Still Rock and Roll To Me, Only the Good Die Young, Captain Jack (UGH!), River of Dreams, You're Only Human (see comments for "Keeping the Faith"), Tell Her About It (see comments for "Keeping the Faith"), Working to Hard can Make you a Music Hackackackackack..., She's Only a Woman to Me, She's Got a Way, the one with the video where's he posing with the electric guitar (A Matter of Trust?), Goodnight Saigon, Allentown, Pressure, An Innocent Man, Angry Young Man, Baby Grand, Running on Ice, The Stranger, lesser known schmaltzy crapola like You're My Home (see comments for "Captain Jack")...

Have to admit, listening to BJ interviews is a guilty pleasure of mine. There is no more ideal voice of boomer "self-discovery," motivated by that sort of continual "no one ever felt this emotion before me." I am in awe of his sheer inpenetrable solipsism, and recommend watching the "Making of River of Dreams" video as a sociological exercise.

Rock and roller cola wars? I can't take it anymore!

frontenac, fondelac, bivouac

CHILDREN OF THALIDOMIDE!!!

He shouts and curses in it.

You have to learn to pace yourself
PRESSURE
You're just like everybody else
PRESSURE
You've only had to run so far, so good
But you will come to a place
Where the only thing you feel
Are loaded guns in your face
And you'll have to deal with
PRESSURE

You used to call me paranoid
PRESSURE
But even you can not avoid
PRESSURE
You turned the tap dance into your crusade
Now here you are with your faith
And your Peter Pan advice
You have no scars on your face
And you cannot handle PRESSURE

All grown up and no place to go
Psych 1, Psych 2, what do you know?
All your life is Channel 13
Sesame Street, what does it mean?

(I'll tell you what it means)
PRESSURE
PRESSURE

Don't ask for help, you're all alone
PRESSURE
You'll have to answer to your own
PRESSURE
I'm sure you'll have some cosmic rationale
But here you are in the ninth
Two men out and three men on
Nowhere to look but inside
Where we all respond to PRESSURE
PRESSURE

All your life is Time Magazine
I read it too, what does it mean?

PRESSURE!!!!!
I'm sure you'll have some cosmic rationale
But here you are with your faith
And your Peter Pan advice
You have no scars on your face
And you cannot handle PRESSURE
PRESSURE PRESSURE
One, two, three, four
PRESSURE!!!!!

D: the list is long but not quite as long as y'all would like to think.

SEARCH: "Uptown Girl," the part in the Simpsons that features "Uptown Girl," "We Didn't Start the Fire," "Tell Her About It," "Piano Man," "Pressure," "The Longest Time," and "My Life"

DESTROY: that "ack ack ack ack" song, "Captain Jack"

His early stuff like "Captain Jack" and "Piano Man" is heinous '70s pop at its absolute nadir. This is why rock and roll is about guitars, not pianos, fuck pianos. "My Life" and "You May Be Right" are two of the most damning indictments of the yuppie generation I've ever heard, and I think the couplet "Don't get me wrong/I still belong" is as close to the true work of the Devil as my atheist soul is ever gonna hear.

what?

DESTROY: everything he's done since. When he married Christie, he probably didn't realize they were the perfect real-life incarnation of Brenda and Eddie. She must have sucked up most of Billy's creative juices, because his albums from "The Bridge" onwards were inexplicably bad by any standard. The one exception, of course, is "Kontsert".

"Ain't it wonderful to be alive when the rock'n'roll plays?"

Also Search songs like "Vienna" and "Only the Good Die Young", a song that he was threatened with DEATH for writing.

Something did happen to him once he married Christie Brinkley (the story about meeting her in a bar in Jamica and serendading her, Elle MacPherson, and Whitney Houston with piano songs is great.) The only song past 1984 that's any good would be "A Matter of Trust" which, as one person pointed out on another thread, has one of the strongest count-in's of any other rock song.

because he physically looks too much like an ugly Michael Keaton

I always thought that he looked like an ugly Joe Torre.

And I've said it before, but it's worth repeating how much I love that oft-dissed & dismissed Attila album!

What's the corollary? A *handsome* Billy Joel?

Maybe I'm too drunk at the moment to deal with these convolutions.

The man hath not an ounce of talent in his entire being.

Guilty pleasure: "For the Longest Time," his Doo Wop number, mid-'80s?

Not as you define it, evidently.

http://www.thevillager.com/villager_12/billy.jpg

http://www.oakridgeboys.com/Media/Boys_Billy_Joel.jpeg

Look, all I'm saying is that some of you all's anger could probably be placed somewhere else.

Billy Joel - Oh, the squandered genius!

D: "We Didn't Start..."

(I did think that it was weird that she was talking about "twenty years ago".)

Hi. Jody (not Beth) Rosen here. As it happens, no, I don't think Elvis is above the criticisms I level at Joel. He's even more pretentious in some respects, and even more of a promiscuous genre-hopping hack, particularly in the post-1980 phase of his career. I mainly invoked Costello in the piece in the context of my embarrassing high school epiphany, when the scales were lifted from my eyes and I realized how monstrously wack it was to worship Billy Joel.

I could go on for hours about Costello's problems -- biggest problem: despite his exalted reputation, his lyrics are pretty atrocious -- but I do think it's pretty inarguable that EC made AT LEAST four fantastic albums (I can think of eight that I love); AND he does have a certain toughness about him, at least on the early albums; AND he was an original, at least back in '77-'79. Whereas Joel has always been derivative and gauche.

Do love BJ's tunes, though -- esp. "Movin' Out." (Also, Billy's "Sometimes a Fantasy" is my third favorite Cars song.)

I'd add this:

- My biggest problem with Costello's lyrics is that they're suffocatingly pseudo-poetical. The guy just can't say anything straight. (Notice that when he comes close to simplicity -- e.g., "I Want You" -- it's great.) The lyrics mostly worked on the first several albums, because they were just plain sharper, and more evocatively ambiguous. But they've gotten increasingly baroque and pretentious and just plain crap. Of course, on the best records the the lyrics don't really matter because his tunes are so great, and most importantly, because he has Bruce and Pete Thomas playing the shit out everything. Those guys are GODS.

Which one?

OLD ILM WAS WRONG: Part #1 in an ongoing series

lower bottom right = my dude

the days of old, the days of fixed img

"and every time i've held a rose, it seems i only felt the thorns...and so it goeeees. and so it goes. and so will you soon, i suppose. but if my silence made you leave then that would be my worst mistake. so i will share this room with you, and you can have this heart to break."

That fixed image is my proudest achievement on ILM.

my best song is Summer Highland Falls
― Bill Joel, Monday, April 12, 2004 12:35 PM (4 years ago)

you are so so right

No love for "Allentown"?

All about Piano Man.

my dad told me a story abt "S,HF" song when we were listening to turnstiles in the car. he said he saw an interview with BJ in which he (joel) kinda laughed at this song, saying something to the effect of "it shows how little i knew about songwriting at the time, with the lyrics being all melancholy and the piano being all peppy and upbeat." maybe it's just me but uh thats's part of why this song works!

lol @ the pic btw

Piano Man is the ultimate wanna-be Bob Dylan song.

Jody Rosen and JBR are not the same person. I think that's mentioned in the FAQ somewhere.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 2 December 2005 07:50 (3 years ago) Bookmark

loool

Search "Laura."
Search "Allentown."

The rest depends on mood.

S: Glass Houses

oh yeah.. Search the "Pressure" video

Pressure's a good song as well. As is Movin' Out.

"Vienna" for sure:

I always have time for "Big Shot" and his other "Italian" sounds.

"The Stranger" is an amazing album. Other than that, at least until the mid 80s, he would come up with great single songs. "The Nylon Curtain" contains a couple of often overlooked gems in "Goodnight Saigon" and "Allentown". Both excellent. And "An Innocent Man" holds up as a great collection of 50s/60s pop pastiches.

From the mid 80s onwards, everything except "The River Of Dreams" may as well be destroyed.

S: 1. Cover of Leonard Cohen's "Light As The Breeze" - better arrangement than the original. 2. Unabashedly Brill-Building songwriting on "The Stranger".
D: "We Didn't Start..."

― Eazy (Eazy), Thursday, December 1, 2005 8:39 PM (3 years ago)

Oh, and thanks YouTube, here's that cover:

I wouldn't give half a shit personally for anything he's done but I kinda respect his unabashed-tin-pan-alleyness in the era of rock "authenticity". Despite his being, apparently, a total dick. Nonetheless, also, props for "The Longest Time" charting, the first acapella song to have done so since (when? The Fifties?) and none since, I don't think (unless there's some boyband I dunno about that did it circa 1999, bells are ringing)

DESTROY: (tho it's such a big destroy, such an awful, insufferable cornball piece of half-baked overstuffed meringue-dressed-as-steak that it might count as a Search): that Vietnam song he did. Makes "Scandinavian Skies" look like "The Bird's The Word." "We smoked our hash pipes! And played our Doors tapes!" Yeah, Billy, I saw that movie too.

Nonetheless, also, props for "The Longest Time" charting, the first acapella song to have done so since (when? The Fifties?) and none since, I don't think (unless there's some boyband I dunno about that did it circa 1999, bells are ringing)

"Don't Worry Be Happy"?

dwbh is acapella, longest time is not

I fail.

And so does Billy.

I seem to remember a decent proportion of a BJ thread somewhere devoted to brilliance of Rosalinda's Eyes.
The drum fade out with the verbed our woodblock sound is aces.

Here's a crappy YT home made vid.

I find him totally inoffensive. Nobody really hates Billy Joel, it's just that some people have three CDs in their house and they are all Billy Joel. I mean, please.

He did some good new wave and I noticed it meshes well with the other new wave I have.

I recently took part in an exercise class in which 'we didn't start the fire' was played.

have you ever done burpees to the words 'chubby checker! psycho! belgians in the congo!'? it's most unsettling.

That sounds like a blast!!

it was preferable to the usual euro-trance mixes of taylor swift, but not by much.

nylon curtain is my jam

Sounds about right.

Not quite as pithy as Liberace's "I cried all the way to the bank". Also when did Billy Joel start looking like Bruce Willis in '12 Monkeys'?

Billy Joel never takes no shit from nobody.

Also when did Billy Joel start looking like Bruce Willis in '12 Monkeys'?

um... 1990?

haha, billy joel, you miserable bastard.

"Big Shit"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7lgXbn3i8s

@ 1:35

In Soviet Union, piano turns YOU over!

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

If Mamet writes a play about the fact that no one is honest, then critics would fall over themselves to applaud its deep and searching insight, but if Joel writes a song about it, everyone dismisses it as hackery.

I've been listening to 'Honesty' over and over, and can't decide if it's genius or dreadful. It's one of those songs where how I feel about it really depends on my mood. Not hackery though.

Any Billy Joel song is okay so long as we see it as sung by some character in a larger drama (if you can already do that as a listener to any pop singer already, more power to you). "Honesty" for example I wouldn't believe for a second coming from an actual person - talk about protesting too much! - but it would be best sung by some character that we as an audience would know was really dishonest or at least morally compromised, and it would therefore make for a profound moment.

I sang & danced to Only The Good Die Young in the privacy of my kitchen last night :)

<3

I just remembered hearing that one on a dedicated NYC express bus bringing me from my high school to my borough of residence and it was kind of an awesome moment

it's a pretty complete thesis on "why u should lose yr virginity to me"

having been a non-catholic kid who went to catholic school and dated the girls there, that song was always otm to me as a teen

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jKAksuhb2U

Worst part about that video was the part where there wasn't really a tantrum.

^^^

this thread sadly lacking in praise for "Close To The Borderline," perhaps the most perfect document of a certain 1980s i'm-an-angry-white-liberal-and-i'm-not-gonna-take-it-anymore stance on record. Styx "Rockin' The Paradise" also a contender. No one who has not studied both these songs can hope to understand what it was to be alive in the Reagan administration.

I said 1980s but I guess both those records were actually literally 1980?

the bag ladies throw their bones in your face, eephus.

("Dirty Laundry" could go on that list.)

ooh good call

One day, I'm going to feel Bowie while the rest of the world goes Frey.

But it's all right. We're all the same even though we're alone.

These tourists from France at the bar who prove their age with passports singing along to “uptown girl” classic or dudz

how's their tipping

"Only someone who's 21 would know this song that was released 15 years before their birth..." ?

right

Party Rock Anthem has the same bpm as Uptown Girl pic.twitter.com/vt7B1mQIqA

— Stan Lewis (@StanLewis_) October 4, 2018

which means by extension that "uptown girl" has the same bpm as "cruel angel's thesis"

what a time to be alive

the inlay of the glass houses lp has a picture of the band. the drummer, liberty devitto, is wearing a watch on his ankle for some reason

http://bp0.blogger.com/_K5vOM2unmkw/Rf6HsBnY8oI/AAAAAAAAAPs/aH3mFvE4k_s/s1600/liberty+devitto.jpg

Just keepin' time.

glass houses is a pretty good album also. a bit front loaded though.

i really like the song "don't ask me why" which is like mccartney doing a brazilian influenced number

• Why would you wear it on your right ankle?

• Why would you wear it with the face facing out?

He just smiled and wouldn't say why.

the original shoegazer

Safety pins holding together clothes, Vaseline in the hair, flowerpots on the head, wristwatch on the ankle: time to get New Wave!

are we sure he isn't wearing a shoe on his hand and doing a little yoga?

Have you guys seen the thing on Instagram?

“thing” may need elaboration

Not insta, but something to do w/this?: https://finesoutherngentlemen.com/products/my-life-ships-week-of-2-14

Sorry.
https://www.instagram.com/rachellichtman/?hl=en
VG always trying to get me to communicate more clearly.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CY6i4PQqtEs/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

DO U SEE?

That thing is some kind of insane earworm time warp time loop.

Ha that is excellent

DEE DEE: No, he isn't in the office yet... I'll give him your message.... Thank you.

BILLY suddenly appears through the door

BILLY: Holy cow, traffic was horrible! Anyone trying to buy the Brooklyn Bridge – it's definitely a seller's market!

DEE DEE: Billy...

BILLY: Not now, Dee Dee! I know I'm already late. Just make sure Big Ol' Bartlesworth doesn't know I was late!

DEE DEE: Billy...!

BILLY: What now?

MR. BARTLESWORTH: William? In my office. NOW!

BILLY: I admit, I told the client, "go ahead with your own life, leave me alone"!

MR. BARTLESWORTH: You had to be a big shot, dincha?!?

Loool!

Trying to think of alternate casting for Mr. Bartlesworth but it’s too perfect.

Totally forgot about Calucci’s Department.

I believe it is actually Mr. Balesworth.

Anyway came to say one of the things that really makes it for me is the harmonica near the end.

Have to admit, listening to BJ interviews is a guilty pleasure of mine. There is no more ideal voice of boomer "self-discovery," motivated by that sort of continual "no one ever felt this emotion before me." I am in awe of his sheer inpenetrable solipsism, and recommend watching the "Making of River of Dreams" video as a sociological exercise.

Rock and roller cola wars? I can't take it anymore!

― Keith Harris (kharris1128), Sunday, 25 August 2002 13:46 (nineteen years ago) link

this is on YouTube and I’m not even a fan really but I’m finding it strangely entertaining

BJ interviews: entertainment’s last stand

I seen the lights go out on YouTube

Set list from last week in Las Vegas. Not half bad for an outdoor show in February!

Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)
Pressure
The Entertainer
Vienna
Don't Ask Me Why
Zanzibar
Allentown
Just the Way You Are
Say Goodbye to Hollywood
The Longest Time
New York State of Mind
The Downeaster Alexa
She's Always a Woman
My Life
Only the Good Die Young
A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum cover)
Sometimes a Fantasy
The River of Dreams (with 'Tush' by ZZ Top interlude)
Nessun dorma (Giacomo Puccini cover) (Mike DelGuidice Vocals)
Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
Piano Man

Encore:
We Didn't Start the Fire
Uptown Girl
It's Still Rock and Roll to Me
Big Shot
You May Be Right (with “Rock & Roll” by Led Zeppelin interlude)

I’ve listened to a bunch more songs—Zanzibar, Stiletto, Summer HF—and I have a new theory about the appeal of the classic Billy Joel character: Naïve Guy Acting Cynical.

(Will listen to 20 more songs to confirm.)

— Emily Nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) March 24, 2022

damn that’s a great setlist

search : "say goodbye to hollywood", "matter of trust"

destroy : pretty much anything else, & especially "piano man"

i may have answered this already 20 years ago - haven't got time to read whole thread right now - & if i did i bet my answer back then was exactly the same

Apparently there really is a William Joel Show - and channel! – on Sirius-XM.

That diner now seems even less impressive than the food has made it seem.

Just saw Fred Hersch - great jazz pianist - and after a performance involving his trio and a string quartet, for an encore he told the audience he was going to play “an ‘80s pop tune…by Billy Joel.” I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan and others in the audience snickered, but Hersch said (not angrily) “don’t laugh, he’s a great songwriter, and this is called ‘And So It Goes’” to which a few people applauded. I didn’t realize Hersch had already recorded and released his own interpretation, but he made a solid case for it - without knowing the words, there were times where I could picture Ella Fitzgerald singing the melody beautifully.

Here’s the studio recording he made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYo-5QSAwzM

(applauded as in to the announcement of the song’s name, but of course everyone applauded afterwards too)

Wait, where did you see Fred Hersch?

92NY

https://www.92ny.org/event/fred-hersch

Nice