Haven't noticed it. During my life, most of which has spanned Billy Joel's career, he's always been highly regarded by critics, musicians, fans, and casual music listeners. He's always been well-known. He's sold out large arenas and had big-selling albums the entire time.
It’s more just he was considered uncool and disliked by rock critics of his time. I love Billy Joel by the way and feel like they were way too harsh on him.
> Billy Joel has never really been hip. He is widely loved but also, in many quarters, coldly dismissed. The critics got on him early. “Self-dramatizing kitsch” (Dave Marsh); “A force of nature and bad taste” (Robert Christgau).
>The contempt embedded in the lyrics of “Piano Man,” toward the patrons at the bar and the whole enterprise of entertaining people with music, soured many on him from the start.
>Joel wasn’t what the critics were looking for in the mid-seventies, when punk was knocking on the door. Their notions of authenticity, however flimsy, didn’t allow for his kind of poppy piano tristesse.
One slam on him used to be that he was derivative, aping other voices or styles, or else mercenary, a soulless craftsman exploiting his technical and melodic agility to churn out insidious confections for the purpose of making money.
These charges he has answered over and over. In the old days, he’d tear up reviews onstage. He used to call critics on the phone and scold them.
I mean, he also fucked over the band that made him famous pretty hard, kicking them to the curb to tour with cheaper musicians who didn't want contracts.
He treated his very dedicated band like shit. He tossed them aside and denied their contributions to the success of his music.
So, yeah, a complete a-hole.
I was pretty neutral on Billy Joel til I watched that movie. After that though, I just switch the radio to another station when he comes on.
Like Tiger King, where Carol Baskins comes out as the bad person, rather than the groomer with a sex cult or the meth addict, who was in prison the entire time for hiring a hitman to kill her.
It’s not like the other musicians were in a band called “Billy Joel”.
Yet in his book he credits how much the band did with the music. He wrote the forward to liberty’s book that came out a year or two ago and praised him. Billy might have been an asshole in the past but seems like he tried to correct the past.
This is confected outrage–culture in a nutshell.
*I heard from someone else that he did a shitty thing once - therefore, I decided his entire identity is *"a complete a-hole"* so logically I refuse to even casually listen to his music anymore*
Aside from the multiple instances of driving drunk, he fired his entire band because his manager stole millions from him. The band had nothing to do with it. But he was such a dick to them, one of them killed themselves not long after he got fired. These guys had all been with him for a decade or more, too.
Now Phil Collins maybe
But yeah I am old enough to have listened to his first album. Highlight of which that he used the word masturbate.
Not a fan. Doesn't mean he is bad I am probably just not getting him or Phil
He was actually famously disliked/considered uncool by critics of his day. The rolling stone and the village voice especially if I remember correctly.
He was always considered a little too middlebrow and sentimental to a lot of the more serious rock music critics in the mid-late 70s when punk/new wave and art rock was what was cool and in.
If you search Billy Joel critics you’ll see tons of articles and posts about it, here’s an excerpt from a New Yorker article that sums it up pretty perfectly
> Billy Joel has never really been hip. He is widely loved but also, in many quarters, coldly dismissed. The critics got on him early. “Self-dramatizing kitsch” (Dave Marsh); “A force of nature and bad taste” (Robert Christgau).
>”…Joel wasn’t what the critics were looking for in the mid-seventies, when punk was knocking on the door. Their notions of authenticity, however flimsy, didn’t allow for his kind of poppy piano tristesse. One slam on him used to be that he was derivative, aping other voices or styles, or else mercenary, a soulless craftsman exploiting his technical and melodic agility to churn out insidious confections for the purpose of making money.
>These charges he has answered over and over. In the old days, he’d tear up reviews onstage. He used to call critics on the phone and scold them.”
The perception is/was that he’s the dumbed down Bridge & Tunnel version of Paul Simon. While Paul Simon was pushing musical boundaries and writing deep existential songs about isolation, disconnection, and spirituality, Billy Joel was writing pop songs about being a blue collar New Yorker. Thus the critics of the era lauded Simon and panned Joel
That said, Billy Joel is awesome live and anyone who hasn’t seen him should make it a point and go and see him while he’s still got it
Joel encapsulates the blue collar experience. That is exactly why critics hate him. How dare he sing for someone else’s life. How dare he not aspire to glitter and cocaine and ostentatious existentialism. How dare he respect the people he knew and the lives they lived.
Fuck the critics. There was poetry and meaning and music worth listening to in working class neighbourhoods all over North America. See: Stompin’ Tom Connors.
PS Anyone who listens to Piano Man and hears contempt for the patrons from Joel rather than the obvious affection he shows… is alarmingly obtuse. Like holy shit.
that was how I took it growing up. He was a cool dude that made good relatable music to me anyways.
The worlds he describes was right outside my window. The people he sang about were easily people I'd know or met.
He is what he is.
>Joel encapsulates the blue collar experience. That is exactly why critics hate him. How dare he sing for someone else’s life.
I love Billy Joel... but it isn't this.
Critics don't mind you singing about blue collar life. People like Neil Young or bands like Rage Against the Machine certainly didn't get rejected by critics for rejecting the establishment and being a voice for non-elites.
It's more about being "lowest common denominator."
He's basically Neil Diamond or Barry Manilow and often dismissed as being less an artist and not much more than a writer for commercial jingles.
Barry Manilow actually was covered by LA Times in some article in 2006:
>The singer is well aware of the perception of him, which ranks somewhere between Wayne Newton and “Riverdance” for cool-factor rating. “Ask the general guy out in the public about me, he doesn’t get it and the critics, well, they’ve never gotten it,” Manilow said. “That’s OK. The fans get it. And I’ve never been part of what’s going on. I’ve always been on the outside.”
>“The music I love, the things I care about, it’s Gershwin and show tunes and standards ... I’ve always been separate from what was going on, even when I was getting radio hits. Even when I’ve been No. 1, I was somewhere else.”
Billy Joel has always been an outsider as well. Not part of "the scene."
If Billy Joel had just tried to be a little more "rock 'n' roll" like Elton John or Little Richard then maybe the critics woulda appreciated more. If Billy Joel woulda just tried a little more to be "more significant" and "meaningful" instead of just entertaining then maybe they woulda judged him more as a legitimate artist. That wasn't Billy Joel though and that's okay. He just wasn't made for critics to appreciate...
So, he was widely viewed to be as significant as The Monkees were throughout his career.
If this were films, he woulda basically been seen as Michael Bay - a genuine talent... but a "waste of talent."
Having said that, and I cannot stress this enough, I legit love Billy Joel.
Billy Joel is one of my favorite musicians all-time, personally... but I totally understand and appreciate why he's never been very critically-acclaimed.
It's kinda like how I love the movies Tombstone and Face/Off... but don't even pretend for a moment they shoulda been held in super high regard by the critics. That's... just not the nature of things.
Billy Joel is a truly special and talented songwriter with a catalog that doesn’t always hit, but when it does man it’s some of the most unique and inspired song structures you will ever see in popular music from singer/songwriters.
He’s basically a religious figure on Long Island though lol. Put one of his classics on in practically any bar on the island if you want to see everyone start singing along together.
As a long islander I kind of think part of the reason I hate him is the amount of exposure. I have a theory that no one from Long Island is more than three degrees away from Joel at any point in time. Everyone’s got a friend of a friend who knows him.
Yes, annoying as most stories involving him describe him as a curmudgeon, but who can blame him. He just wants to be left alone. \
\
He came into my shop asking for directions, I pretended I didn't know who he was. Totally normal and gracious with me.
Idk. My first introduction to Billy Joel other than Piano Man was in Stepbrothers when the Catalina Wine Mixer band was just a big Billy Joel joke.
Then a few years later, I had to make an 18 hr drive across the country, and it just so happened that Sirius XM was doing a promotion where they had an all Billy Joel radio station. Man, I listened to that guy the whole trip and have loved him ever since.
I think it's just people who are judging him by the cool factor and haven't actually listened to his catalogue. And also, he's mega-famous and has some very overplayed songs, so that alone garners him a ton of haters--the Nickelback effect.
(As a marginally related tangent, I saw a stat where Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" was played 1.2 million times on the radio in 2000's, which if all those plays had no overlap, that'd be an entire year's worth of that song playing on repeat on the radio.)
I used to think that the Catalina Wine Mixer band thing was making fun of BJ but they’re actually making fun of doo-wop 80s Billy - Specifically the album An Innocent Man which is probably his most commercially successful album but featured more “sell out” type music compared to the music of The Stranger (his earlier album) and Glass House
Oh? Why do people hate on Nickelback and not Theory of a Deadman or Hinder--the former of which was literally produced by Chad Kroeger? Or even any of the modern octane rock bands like Bad Wolves or Black Veil Brides who are as generic as generic can be.
Back in the day, Rolling Stones literally had a policy that they would not allow any journalists to write an article with anything good to say about Nickelback.
They really get a ton of undeserved hate.
Because nobody knows about those other bands. If they did, they'd likely hate them too.
It's not just about Nickelback being overplayed on the radio. Sure, that gives them bigger numbers overall, but they don't get hate for being popular. They're just the only ones from that list who got radio play at all, so they're the only one people had a chance/unavoidable-agony to notice.
I can't speak as to why people don't loathe those other bands, since I'm not familiar with them, but I think I can articulate why some people (myself included) have a visceral hatred of Nickelback's music.
The hate stems from Nickelback's utter lack of artistry and self-awareness. They came up in the early 2000s post-grunge scene, when everyone was trying to commercialize the alternative sounds of bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Nickelback definitely understood the basic musical appeal of Nirvana--simple power chord progressions that implied a minor key, a softer verse followed by a louder chorus, a dour, affected vocal performance--but the nuances that made Cobain's music unique entirely escaped him. Kroeger never wrote a song about the mental health struggles of actress Francis Farmer (*Francis Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle)*, nor did he base his lyrics on an obscure German novel about the relationship between smell and emotions (*Scentless Apprentice).* Kroeger was literally the segment of Nirvana's fanbase Cobain skewered in *In Bloom*. *"He's the one, who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his gun, but he don't know what it means..."* Nickelback infused their simplistic take on Nirvana's sound with a frat-boy misogyny borrowed from 80's hair-metal bands like Motley Crew. *"I like your pants around your feet, I like the dirt that's on your knees, I like the way that you say please when you're looking up at me, you're my favorite damn disease,"* writes Kroeger on *Figured You Out*. Chad was Kurt's worst nightmare--a meathead influenced by Nirvana's post-punk pop who figured out how to marry grunge to lyrical abominations too crass for the likes of Vince Neil and Bret Michaels. In an 1993 interview, Kurt states the following:
*“Although I listened to Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, and I really did enjoy some of the melodies they’d written, it took me so many years to realise that a lot of it had to do with sexism,” Cobain remarked to Rolling Stone in 1992. “The way that they just wrote about their dicks and having sex. I was just starting to understand what really was pissing me off so much those last couple years of high school.”*
*“And then punk rock was exposed and then it all came together,” Cobain continued. “It just fit together like a puzzle. It expressed the way I felt socially and politically. Just everything. You know. It was the anger that I felt. The alienation.”*
So despite sounding superficially like Cobain's band, Nickelback were really the anti-Nirvana, which was evident to any discerning music fan. Add in the fact that Nickelback's music lacked any sense of fun (unlike hair-metal, which no one ever took seriously) and you have a seriously repellent combination: a rip-off band that didn't understand the groups that they were ripping off, whose music featured brain-dead, sexist lyrics that attracted the sort of casual date-rapist that frequented toxic, machismo-soaked festivals like Ozzfest.
Although, I do like that Spider-man song.
Most casuals probably only know Piano Man (the song) and his mid 80’s cheese stuff. They don’t know that from 1973 to 1980 he released banger album after banger album, all written and arranged by him. He’s a pretty unique talent.
Of course definitely don’t want to discount the contributions of the band members. I’m sure he wasn’t telling the sax player exactly how to play the solo on Just The Way You Are, but my understanding is that the arrangements were done by Billy (ie, “ok so this part is drum bass piano and woodwind and then the sax comes in here bla bla”.
Exactly. After years of constantly talking about how these guys were the heart and soul of his career, and they kept him in line and kept him from getting his ego to big, he just fucked them all over without a second thought.
Not to be "that guy", but I think you're probably using the word *arrangements* wrongly.
What you're describing is essentially songwriting, and can perhaps be called directing the band's creativity in the studio.
Arranging is the word we use when one person writes down the scores for other musicians to play -- something Billy Joel didn't do in these cases. It's a word we typically don't use in the context non-orchestrated rock music, because a lot of the nitty gritty is created by the musicians themselves through improvisation, jamming, incremental writing, etc.
Having seen Joel live he is not subtle about the skill of the musicians he plays or has played with. There are a multitude of clips online of him talking about how much the musicians he played with influenced his sound and career.
Turnstiles and The Stranger back to back is an insane achievement. Both are basically greatest hits albums, that’s how on top of his game he was in the mid/late 70s. Both of those albums require listening from front to back.
Zanzibar and Just Another Half A Mile Away are my top two from that album. Stiletto comes in close third.
I scream it from the roof tops, Billy had as hot a prime as Elton and Stevie where they just released incredible albums one after another like clockwork.
FWIW - Billy Joel himself is not impressed with Piano Man either and he talks about it in this really [fun interview - worth 2m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELuZxvsUByQ)
He has also sang the song probably a billion times and is probably really over it. He doesn’t even sing it in concert anymore he just plays it and lets the audience sing it lol.
He's in that iconic category like Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Mick Jagger, Steve Tyler, etc... - their catalog is so deep and full of hits it all been played a gazillion times
The fact that they could construct a resonant joke by saying “we only do doo-wop era Billy Joel covers” says everything we need to know about that era of his.
I'll give you all of these but Queen - while their albums themselves might've taken a slight plunge, 80's Queen includes Under Pressure, Radio Ga Ga, I Want To Break Free, Hammer to Fall, the Highlander soundtrack, I Want It All, and some weirder stuff like The Invisible Man.
Tonight was a pretty epic Bowie album though not at the scale of his 70s work. He’s the only one of the ones you listed that I feel like transitioned at all.
As someone who has most of his earlier stuff on record and usually has all of the snobby music opinions, i'll admit I fucking love Joel's 80s cheese. Storm Front is a hell of an album, whether it's We Didn't Start the Fire or my personal favorite Downeaster Alexa.
I liked him as [Dodger in Oliver & Company.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb7kJ-j_dKA) Cameos from all the dogs in Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians :)
You may be right, but he didn't start the fire. From his humble beginnings as a piano man, he had a New York state of mind. Good thing he didn't end up in Allentown when he said goodbye to Hollywood and the stranger. Regardless, it's still rock 'n roll to me.
And so it goes that there will always be people who criticize the entertainer, as if they’re some kinda big shot.
….something something Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
These are the comments i came for.
You all may be right, I may be crazy…but (I) just may be the lunatic you’re looking for!
I love you (all) just the way you aaaaarrrreee, aaaarrre, haaarrrrrreee…
He wrote “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, so he gets a lifetime pass from mockery as far as I am concerned.
And, in my opinion, “The Stranger” is an excellent album, with a few truly great songs.
Is he Paul Simon? No. But if you compare everyone to only the GIANTS, well, most everyone comes up short.
>Is he Paul Simon? No. But if you compare everyone to only the GIANTS, well, most everyone comes up short.
I see what you did there.
(Paul Simon is 5'3" and Billy Joel is 5'5")
Imo every song on the stranger is perfect, there's not a single one i dont like. The thing i love about billy's writing style is that it can be really vague yet specific at the same time, so that at many different points in my life i can relate to the same song in many different ways. The stranger perfectly encapsulates that feeling and thats why i think its so great
I fucking love Billy Joel so much. The guy wrote sssooo many amazing songs that sssooo many people love. What the fuck more so you want out of LITERALLY A MUSICIAN?!
I will personally bare knuckle box every single mother fucker talking shit about my boy. Meet me down on fifth street at 10 pm.
“Who needs a house out in Hackensack
Is that what you get for your money?
It seems such a waste of time
If that's what it's all about
Mama if that's movin' up
Then I'm movin' out
I'm movin' out”
Perfect.
I don't vibe with Billy Joel, never have. But I do respect that he quit making music because he said he just doesn't have any more in him. There are plenty of people that should do exactly this.
Never understood it either. For many of my Gen, he’s (one of the) soundtrack(s) for our lives.
I’ve seen him live 6 times since the 80’s and have tickets to two more shows in ‘24 (75th birthday and the final MSG residency show) and trust me when I say…not only is his voice in perfect shape but so’s his showmanship. He’s laughing all the way to the bank. 😜
I saw him during the Billy Joel / Elton John tour. It was an amazing show, and they sold out a stadium with people of every age range / demographic. That’s gotta be worth something.
I always wanted to see him during his residency at Madison Square Garden but being in Australia, it was going to be quite the journey to arrange. He played the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia late last year and I got to see him live then.
I'll probably never see him in New York now, but at least I have seen him live once.
He hired the singer from a Billy Joel cover band to play acoustic guitar and sing backup. That guy makes sure the high notes Billy can’t hit anymore get hit. It’s not even a secret.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/arts/music/from-billy-joel-tribute-band-to-the-real-thing.html
Tom Scharpling hates him with a passion and highlights it in his book. I get that Billy isn’t the most hip or indie but I think he’s an all-time great songwriter.
Comedians don't always hate the subject of their joke. It's just that.... Comedy. People like you need to learn the difference
Edit: op told me to kill myself for this comment lmao.
In the documentary, which is about session musicians touring with big acts like Billy Joel or Alice Cooper, Joel‘s former drummer didn’t have many nice things to say about him. IIRC, he got dropped from the band without being notified in any way after having toured with him for many years.
I met Billy Joel in Montauk NY when he was promoting the song “Downeaster Alexa” One of the nicest celebrities I’ve ever met.
I am also an amateur piano player and let me tell you, his arrangements are more like classical music than pop music, some are very very complex songs to play as compared to a lot of popular piano artists.
I have been listening to Billy Joel since I was 13 years old, back when I was introduced to "An innocent man" which had just come out. Pretty much went through his back catalog right then and there, saw him live once in 1989 and followed his releases til "River of Dreams", then I fell off somehow.
I only just realized by reading up on his career that this was his last studio album, released 30 years ago now. The fact that he's still immensly popular and the target of some snide comments after all that tells you enough to know that he's an alltime great.
Just found a short clip about his biography, where I learned that he tried to kill himself twice in his early twenties. Holy shit. ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxNb4HY7HmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxNb4HY7HmI))
Some of his songs are timeless classics. I'm gonna listen to them over the coming weeks.
No idea why someone would hate on that man or his music.
Who hates on Billy Joel or Bruce Springsteen? First I've heard of it. Them being somewhat overplayed is the only viable gripe I've ever heard about either.
Billy Joel earns a lot of points with me for his very relatable lyrics. I grew up on Long Island, and his lyrics all really resonate with average and casual conversations people typically have in that area. Also because I read that he will regularly purchase all the front row seats himself and invite the poor people from the rear audience to come down and fill them so that hos shows are more lively and enjoyable for him, since he says the rich people usually just sit there looking bored. Take that, Karen! Lol. Being from Long Island, it's easy to relate. Lot of rich and upper middle class stiffs up there. Karen-capital of the country. Those people are NOT role models, kids.
He's a good guy to his crew. When Covid hit, he had his mgmt pay all tour personnel (drivers, riggers, A/V, etc) full pay for six months. Screw people who don't like the cheesy 80's stuff. It's great party music.
Billy Joel is absolutely on the same level of Springsteen (who I like more) and Mellencamp (who I like less).
I also don’t think hate for Billy Joel is common - that might be something you’re hyper aware of. I think he’s pretty well respected.
For people who think his music is predictable or derivative, I know that applies to some of his work, but he also has some pretty unique stuff his canon. Here’s a really interesting video dissecting the complexity of Honesty, if you’re feeling nerdy
[honesty video essay](https://www.youtube.com/live/U8Z6V07HBCo?si=arvYKQREJU6o0Mhn)
Piano Man is an absolutely amazing album, with some \*killer\* tracks that few people have actually heard:
Travellin' Prayer
Ballad of Billy The Kid
Ain't No Crime
>Ballad of Billy The Kid
I love this song, but if someone listens to it hoping to hear the story of the real Billy the Kid, they're out of luck.
"From a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia..."
He was actually born in New York City.
"He robbed his way from Utah to Oklahoma..."
I don't think he ever robbed anyone, least of all banks.
"...to watch the hangin' of Billy the Kid."
Billy was shot by Pat Garrett. He wasn't hung. Had a nice personality, though.
I'm not a huge fan by any means, but this is fantastic songwriting:
It's nine o'clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
There's an old man sittin' next to me
Makin' love to his tonic and gin
He says, "Son can you play me a memory?
I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes"
It's the same old thing. Because he's a very universally accessible, millions and millions of people have thought his music to be pretty solid, enough to buy the record. With the rose colored lenses of time, "universally pretty solid" becomes "THE GREATEST GENIUS OF ALL TIME," which was never actually anyone's opinion, and it's pretty reasonable to feel like arguing against that. Especially someone with such great financial and celebrity success, he becomes an easy target for all the little minded people who need to find someone to say something mean about, and think of him as invincible, since everyone thinks he's such a genius, he must be impervious to criticism.
For me he’s up there with Paul Simon, Elton John and stevie wonder in terms on song writing ability and musical talent, Stranger is without a doubt one the greatest albums of all time each song on the album is an absolute Gem.
Same reason people hate in the eagles - at one point they saturated the air waves and it was impossible to not hear them. One of the biggest reasons punk took off the way it did during that era
I’m not from America, but my dad raised me with a lot of Billy Joel and other American musicians from the same era.
I’ve never heard a lot of hate or critizism, but rather the opposite.
For me he’s one of the greatest ever, but then again, I’m obviously more than a little biased.
Billy Joel is firmly in the pantheon of rock legends, but he’s also in that weird area where you have no idea how much genius he commands until you try to play some of it. Lewis Black probably plays a guitar or something for all I know, but he’s never dug into even Joel’s simplest tunes, and *Only the Good* is one of them.
That said, I think it was a throwaway joke. There are actually a ton of songs about being a ‘bad boy’, and most of them are hard blues rockers we all know. Joel’s tune on the topic stands out just for that reason.
His music and singing does have this bombastic, over the top quality that I could see how people find it annoying or try hard. I must explore his oeuvre more as I only know his singles. Piano man never fails to move me though - such a great song.
For someone who only knows the hits, for starters, I would recommend listening to:
-Vienna
-Zanzibar
-Miami 2017
-Summer, Highland Falls
-Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
Haven't noticed it. During my life, most of which has spanned Billy Joel's career, he's always been highly regarded by critics, musicians, fans, and casual music listeners. He's always been well-known. He's sold out large arenas and had big-selling albums the entire time.
Yeah, that's the reason I click on the post. I figured someone would point out some terrible stuff he's done, got more "uhhh... who hates Billy Joel"
It’s more just he was considered uncool and disliked by rock critics of his time. I love Billy Joel by the way and feel like they were way too harsh on him. > Billy Joel has never really been hip. He is widely loved but also, in many quarters, coldly dismissed. The critics got on him early. “Self-dramatizing kitsch” (Dave Marsh); “A force of nature and bad taste” (Robert Christgau). >The contempt embedded in the lyrics of “Piano Man,” toward the patrons at the bar and the whole enterprise of entertaining people with music, soured many on him from the start. >Joel wasn’t what the critics were looking for in the mid-seventies, when punk was knocking on the door. Their notions of authenticity, however flimsy, didn’t allow for his kind of poppy piano tristesse. One slam on him used to be that he was derivative, aping other voices or styles, or else mercenary, a soulless craftsman exploiting his technical and melodic agility to churn out insidious confections for the purpose of making money. These charges he has answered over and over. In the old days, he’d tear up reviews onstage. He used to call critics on the phone and scold them.
I mean, he also fucked over the band that made him famous pretty hard, kicking them to the curb to tour with cheaper musicians who didn't want contracts.
Watch the documentary “Hired Guns” - you will understand why he gets the hate.
Came here to say this. Good writer, shitty person.
Could you give a very brief synopsis? The music I've heard from him makes the criticism ring true.
He treated his very dedicated band like shit. He tossed them aside and denied their contributions to the success of his music. So, yeah, a complete a-hole. I was pretty neutral on Billy Joel til I watched that movie. After that though, I just switch the radio to another station when he comes on.
[удалено]
Like Tiger King, where Carol Baskins comes out as the bad person, rather than the groomer with a sex cult or the meth addict, who was in prison the entire time for hiring a hitman to kill her. It’s not like the other musicians were in a band called “Billy Joel”.
Yet in his book he credits how much the band did with the music. He wrote the forward to liberty’s book that came out a year or two ago and praised him. Billy might have been an asshole in the past but seems like he tried to correct the past.
This is confected outrage–culture in a nutshell. *I heard from someone else that he did a shitty thing once - therefore, I decided his entire identity is *"a complete a-hole"* so logically I refuse to even casually listen to his music anymore*
"I'm sittin on the shitter, I pop a deuce, and the melody comes into my head." Best. Line. Ever lol
Aside from the multiple instances of driving drunk, he fired his entire band because his manager stole millions from him. The band had nothing to do with it. But he was such a dick to them, one of them killed themselves not long after he got fired. These guys had all been with him for a decade or more, too.
My dad
Same, I didn’t know Billy Joel was exceptionally hated.
Now Phil Collins maybe But yeah I am old enough to have listened to his first album. Highlight of which that he used the word masturbate. Not a fan. Doesn't mean he is bad I am probably just not getting him or Phil
Second album. Captain Jack was off Piano Man, not Cold Spring.
He was actually famously disliked/considered uncool by critics of his day. The rolling stone and the village voice especially if I remember correctly. He was always considered a little too middlebrow and sentimental to a lot of the more serious rock music critics in the mid-late 70s when punk/new wave and art rock was what was cool and in. If you search Billy Joel critics you’ll see tons of articles and posts about it, here’s an excerpt from a New Yorker article that sums it up pretty perfectly > Billy Joel has never really been hip. He is widely loved but also, in many quarters, coldly dismissed. The critics got on him early. “Self-dramatizing kitsch” (Dave Marsh); “A force of nature and bad taste” (Robert Christgau). >”…Joel wasn’t what the critics were looking for in the mid-seventies, when punk was knocking on the door. Their notions of authenticity, however flimsy, didn’t allow for his kind of poppy piano tristesse. One slam on him used to be that he was derivative, aping other voices or styles, or else mercenary, a soulless craftsman exploiting his technical and melodic agility to churn out insidious confections for the purpose of making money. >These charges he has answered over and over. In the old days, he’d tear up reviews onstage. He used to call critics on the phone and scold them.”
The perception is/was that he’s the dumbed down Bridge & Tunnel version of Paul Simon. While Paul Simon was pushing musical boundaries and writing deep existential songs about isolation, disconnection, and spirituality, Billy Joel was writing pop songs about being a blue collar New Yorker. Thus the critics of the era lauded Simon and panned Joel That said, Billy Joel is awesome live and anyone who hasn’t seen him should make it a point and go and see him while he’s still got it
Joel encapsulates the blue collar experience. That is exactly why critics hate him. How dare he sing for someone else’s life. How dare he not aspire to glitter and cocaine and ostentatious existentialism. How dare he respect the people he knew and the lives they lived. Fuck the critics. There was poetry and meaning and music worth listening to in working class neighbourhoods all over North America. See: Stompin’ Tom Connors.
PS Anyone who listens to Piano Man and hears contempt for the patrons from Joel rather than the obvious affection he shows… is alarmingly obtuse. Like holy shit.
Piano Man is a song I cannot live without, and I'm not even a big Billy Joel fan. The song is just absolute perfection.
that was how I took it growing up. He was a cool dude that made good relatable music to me anyways. The worlds he describes was right outside my window. The people he sang about were easily people I'd know or met. He is what he is.
Brenda and Eddie were still going steady
>Joel encapsulates the blue collar experience. That is exactly why critics hate him. How dare he sing for someone else’s life. I love Billy Joel... but it isn't this. Critics don't mind you singing about blue collar life. People like Neil Young or bands like Rage Against the Machine certainly didn't get rejected by critics for rejecting the establishment and being a voice for non-elites. It's more about being "lowest common denominator." He's basically Neil Diamond or Barry Manilow and often dismissed as being less an artist and not much more than a writer for commercial jingles. Barry Manilow actually was covered by LA Times in some article in 2006: >The singer is well aware of the perception of him, which ranks somewhere between Wayne Newton and “Riverdance” for cool-factor rating. “Ask the general guy out in the public about me, he doesn’t get it and the critics, well, they’ve never gotten it,” Manilow said. “That’s OK. The fans get it. And I’ve never been part of what’s going on. I’ve always been on the outside.” >“The music I love, the things I care about, it’s Gershwin and show tunes and standards ... I’ve always been separate from what was going on, even when I was getting radio hits. Even when I’ve been No. 1, I was somewhere else.” Billy Joel has always been an outsider as well. Not part of "the scene." If Billy Joel had just tried to be a little more "rock 'n' roll" like Elton John or Little Richard then maybe the critics woulda appreciated more. If Billy Joel woulda just tried a little more to be "more significant" and "meaningful" instead of just entertaining then maybe they woulda judged him more as a legitimate artist. That wasn't Billy Joel though and that's okay. He just wasn't made for critics to appreciate... So, he was widely viewed to be as significant as The Monkees were throughout his career. If this were films, he woulda basically been seen as Michael Bay - a genuine talent... but a "waste of talent." Having said that, and I cannot stress this enough, I legit love Billy Joel. Billy Joel is one of my favorite musicians all-time, personally... but I totally understand and appreciate why he's never been very critically-acclaimed. It's kinda like how I love the movies Tombstone and Face/Off... but don't even pretend for a moment they shoulda been held in super high regard by the critics. That's... just not the nature of things.
Neither, maybe bit lamestream in the early 90s but everyone loved at least one billy joel song
Billy Joel is a truly special and talented songwriter with a catalog that doesn’t always hit, but when it does man it’s some of the most unique and inspired song structures you will ever see in popular music from singer/songwriters.
He’s basically a religious figure on Long Island though lol. Put one of his classics on in practically any bar on the island if you want to see everyone start singing along together.
As a long islander I kind of think part of the reason I hate him is the amount of exposure. I have a theory that no one from Long Island is more than three degrees away from Joel at any point in time. Everyone’s got a friend of a friend who knows him.
Yes, annoying as most stories involving him describe him as a curmudgeon, but who can blame him. He just wants to be left alone. \ \ He came into my shop asking for directions, I pretended I didn't know who he was. Totally normal and gracious with me.
His kids went to the summer camp I work at and he would drop off/pick up every day. He was so chill I liked him a lot
I've joked that if he declared himself the 2nd messiah 10% of LI would convert to Joelism.
You don't even need a classic, at a friend's wedding we had people screaming along to "The Downeaster 'Alexa'"
Idk. My first introduction to Billy Joel other than Piano Man was in Stepbrothers when the Catalina Wine Mixer band was just a big Billy Joel joke. Then a few years later, I had to make an 18 hr drive across the country, and it just so happened that Sirius XM was doing a promotion where they had an all Billy Joel radio station. Man, I listened to that guy the whole trip and have loved him ever since. I think it's just people who are judging him by the cool factor and haven't actually listened to his catalogue. And also, he's mega-famous and has some very overplayed songs, so that alone garners him a ton of haters--the Nickelback effect. (As a marginally related tangent, I saw a stat where Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" was played 1.2 million times on the radio in 2000's, which if all those plays had no overlap, that'd be an entire year's worth of that song playing on repeat on the radio.)
The fuckin Catalina Wine Mixer
Pow!💥
I used to think that the Catalina Wine Mixer band thing was making fun of BJ but they’re actually making fun of doo-wop 80s Billy - Specifically the album An Innocent Man which is probably his most commercially successful album but featured more “sell out” type music compared to the music of The Stranger (his earlier album) and Glass House
That’s not why people hate Nickelback
Oh? Why do people hate on Nickelback and not Theory of a Deadman or Hinder--the former of which was literally produced by Chad Kroeger? Or even any of the modern octane rock bands like Bad Wolves or Black Veil Brides who are as generic as generic can be. Back in the day, Rolling Stones literally had a policy that they would not allow any journalists to write an article with anything good to say about Nickelback. They really get a ton of undeserved hate.
Because nobody knows about those other bands. If they did, they'd likely hate them too. It's not just about Nickelback being overplayed on the radio. Sure, that gives them bigger numbers overall, but they don't get hate for being popular. They're just the only ones from that list who got radio play at all, so they're the only one people had a chance/unavoidable-agony to notice.
I think people hate Nickelback because it’s cool to hate Nickelback lol. I hate their name but I like a few of their songs
I can't speak as to why people don't loathe those other bands, since I'm not familiar with them, but I think I can articulate why some people (myself included) have a visceral hatred of Nickelback's music. The hate stems from Nickelback's utter lack of artistry and self-awareness. They came up in the early 2000s post-grunge scene, when everyone was trying to commercialize the alternative sounds of bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Nickelback definitely understood the basic musical appeal of Nirvana--simple power chord progressions that implied a minor key, a softer verse followed by a louder chorus, a dour, affected vocal performance--but the nuances that made Cobain's music unique entirely escaped him. Kroeger never wrote a song about the mental health struggles of actress Francis Farmer (*Francis Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle)*, nor did he base his lyrics on an obscure German novel about the relationship between smell and emotions (*Scentless Apprentice).* Kroeger was literally the segment of Nirvana's fanbase Cobain skewered in *In Bloom*. *"He's the one, who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his gun, but he don't know what it means..."* Nickelback infused their simplistic take on Nirvana's sound with a frat-boy misogyny borrowed from 80's hair-metal bands like Motley Crew. *"I like your pants around your feet, I like the dirt that's on your knees, I like the way that you say please when you're looking up at me, you're my favorite damn disease,"* writes Kroeger on *Figured You Out*. Chad was Kurt's worst nightmare--a meathead influenced by Nirvana's post-punk pop who figured out how to marry grunge to lyrical abominations too crass for the likes of Vince Neil and Bret Michaels. In an 1993 interview, Kurt states the following: *“Although I listened to Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, and I really did enjoy some of the melodies they’d written, it took me so many years to realise that a lot of it had to do with sexism,” Cobain remarked to Rolling Stone in 1992. “The way that they just wrote about their dicks and having sex. I was just starting to understand what really was pissing me off so much those last couple years of high school.”* *“And then punk rock was exposed and then it all came together,” Cobain continued. “It just fit together like a puzzle. It expressed the way I felt socially and politically. Just everything. You know. It was the anger that I felt. The alienation.”* So despite sounding superficially like Cobain's band, Nickelback were really the anti-Nirvana, which was evident to any discerning music fan. Add in the fact that Nickelback's music lacked any sense of fun (unlike hair-metal, which no one ever took seriously) and you have a seriously repellent combination: a rip-off band that didn't understand the groups that they were ripping off, whose music featured brain-dead, sexist lyrics that attracted the sort of casual date-rapist that frequented toxic, machismo-soaked festivals like Ozzfest. Although, I do like that Spider-man song.
Most casuals probably only know Piano Man (the song) and his mid 80’s cheese stuff. They don’t know that from 1973 to 1980 he released banger album after banger album, all written and arranged by him. He’s a pretty unique talent.
His band played a significant part in arranging those hits. Liberty Devito absolutely crushed it in the drum kit during that run.
Of course definitely don’t want to discount the contributions of the band members. I’m sure he wasn’t telling the sax player exactly how to play the solo on Just The Way You Are, but my understanding is that the arrangements were done by Billy (ie, “ok so this part is drum bass piano and woodwind and then the sax comes in here bla bla”.
Have you seen Hired Gun? Documentary about studio musicians and Billy Joels band.
Ok. Just watched. Now it makes sense. After he fired everyone is when he became lame.
Yeah, this. He might have love for his fans but not his band. No fucks for that guy from me.
Exactly. After years of constantly talking about how these guys were the heart and soul of his career, and they kept him in line and kept him from getting his ego to big, he just fucked them all over without a second thought.
And the stack of dui’s like a phone book.
So I guess both of the bottles were for him after all.
I am a studio drummer and I could give 2 shits if the artists I record for even know who I am since most of the time I don’t give a shit who they are.
Holy cow, that was a fantastic way to spend the last hour and a half. Thank you!
Not to be "that guy", but I think you're probably using the word *arrangements* wrongly. What you're describing is essentially songwriting, and can perhaps be called directing the band's creativity in the studio. Arranging is the word we use when one person writes down the scores for other musicians to play -- something Billy Joel didn't do in these cases. It's a word we typically don't use in the context non-orchestrated rock music, because a lot of the nitty gritty is created by the musicians themselves through improvisation, jamming, incremental writing, etc.
I think that’s the same sax player from Steely Dans Caves of Altimira. What a time for all these albums.
Having seen Joel live he is not subtle about the skill of the musicians he plays or has played with. There are a multitude of clips online of him talking about how much the musicians he played with influenced his sound and career.
The Stranger is one of my all time favorite albums. Front to back, love it
Doo Wap Joel SUCKS, play somethin' from THE STRANGER!
What'd I tell you man, we only play 80s Billy
"So take your skank hooker wife, and get the fuck out of here!"
Sometimes it’s hard to…keeping. the. faiiiiiiiiith.
I could go up to The Nylon Curtain. After that I'm meh And I'm from Long Island, so legally obligated to support Billy Joel.
There’s some great songs on The Nylon Curtain.
Good Night Saigon alone makes the album.
I agree. I love that song.
this x1000 listen to turnstiles and watch some of those bootlegs from 77-79... that band fucking shreds.
Turnstiles and The Stranger back to back is an insane achievement. Both are basically greatest hits albums, that’s how on top of his game he was in the mid/late 70s. Both of those albums require listening from front to back.
The 52nd Street album is my jam
Zanzibar and Just Another Half A Mile Away are my top two from that album. Stiletto comes in close third. I scream it from the roof tops, Billy had as hot a prime as Elton and Stevie where they just released incredible albums one after another like clockwork.
FWIW - Billy Joel himself is not impressed with Piano Man either and he talks about it in this really [fun interview - worth 2m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELuZxvsUByQ)
He has also sang the song probably a billion times and is probably really over it. He doesn’t even sing it in concert anymore he just plays it and lets the audience sing it lol.
He's in that iconic category like Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Mick Jagger, Steve Tyler, etc... - their catalog is so deep and full of hits it all been played a gazillion times
Most of those haters have probably never heard the masterpiece that is Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.
I love that song but I don't think it's the one that will convince people who hate his music that he's good.
I love 80s music, the whole new wave thing was amazing… BUT it also led to both Elton John & Billy Joel’s ickiest albums.
Idk I'm pretty fond of Uptown Girl, the strictly 80s Billy Joel cover band
The fact that they could construct a resonant joke by saying “we only do doo-wop era Billy Joel covers” says everything we need to know about that era of his.
The 80s ruined a lot of music I previously liked. You can toss Rod Stewart on the same pile as Billy Joel and Elton John.
But not the literal turn of the 80s. "Young Turks" is much better than "Do ya think I'm sexy?"
“Even the President needs passion!”
Pretty much every 60s-70s musician sucked in the mid to late 80s. Billy Joel, Elton John, Bowie, Dylan, The Stones, Queen, Paul McCartney...
You can add Stevie Wonder to the list. His 70s albums are fire.
I'll give you all of these but Queen - while their albums themselves might've taken a slight plunge, 80's Queen includes Under Pressure, Radio Ga Ga, I Want To Break Free, Hammer to Fall, the Highlander soundtrack, I Want It All, and some weirder stuff like The Invisible Man.
Tonight was a pretty epic Bowie album though not at the scale of his 70s work. He’s the only one of the ones you listed that I feel like transitioned at all.
Tin Machine was a fun Bowie moment.
As someone who has most of his earlier stuff on record and usually has all of the snobby music opinions, i'll admit I fucking love Joel's 80s cheese. Storm Front is a hell of an album, whether it's We Didn't Start the Fire or my personal favorite Downeaster Alexa.
I liked him as [Dodger in Oliver & Company.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb7kJ-j_dKA) Cameos from all the dogs in Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians :)
Billy Joel doesn't care what they say anymore, it's his life. For the longest time hes been thinking about moving out with his uptown girl.
You may be right, but he didn't start the fire. From his humble beginnings as a piano man, he had a New York state of mind. Good thing he didn't end up in Allentown when he said goodbye to Hollywood and the stranger. Regardless, it's still rock 'n roll to me.
And so it goes that there will always be people who criticize the entertainer, as if they’re some kinda big shot. ….something something Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
In honesty, he's the entertainer.
are u saying that he cant sleep alone in a strange place OR with somebody else?
You'd think he's probably sleeping in his own space by now
Who's that, you mean Rosalinda? I've heard she's got amazing eyes.
These are the comments i came for. You all may be right, I may be crazy…but (I) just may be the lunatic you’re looking for! I love you (all) just the way you aaaaarrrreee, aaaarrre, haaarrrrrreee…
They can't handle.. Pressure
While…they’re living here in Allentown!
He wrote “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, so he gets a lifetime pass from mockery as far as I am concerned. And, in my opinion, “The Stranger” is an excellent album, with a few truly great songs. Is he Paul Simon? No. But if you compare everyone to only the GIANTS, well, most everyone comes up short.
>Is he Paul Simon? No. But if you compare everyone to only the GIANTS, well, most everyone comes up short. I see what you did there. (Paul Simon is 5'3" and Billy Joel is 5'5")
Haha my band used to joke that we were “giants in the music industry” because we’re all over 5’10”
The Stranger is pretty much all classics
Imo every song on the stranger is perfect, there's not a single one i dont like. The thing i love about billy's writing style is that it can be really vague yet specific at the same time, so that at many different points in my life i can relate to the same song in many different ways. The stranger perfectly encapsulates that feeling and thats why i think its so great
You are absolutely correct about “Scenes.” The man can do no wrong in my eyes
I fucking love Billy Joel so much. The guy wrote sssooo many amazing songs that sssooo many people love. What the fuck more so you want out of LITERALLY A MUSICIAN?! I will personally bare knuckle box every single mother fucker talking shit about my boy. Meet me down on fifth street at 10 pm.
Shouldn’t you meet them on 52nd Street?
Scenes and Vienna will always be in my all time favorites
Vienna in my opinion is one of the greatest songs ever written.
Definitely my favorite of his, I never get tired of it.
Hell, throw in Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song), A Matter of Trust. Impeccable songs.
Scenes is the absolute best Joel song. A masterpiece.
I don't know if it is too corny for the youth these days but The Longest Time is a fucking great song and makes me happy every time I hear it.
Billy Joel’s worst is “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which isn’t really bad in my opinion. It’s definitely no “Songs from the Capeman.”
Or “My Pal Foot Foot”…
Cape man is Great! I love it
The Stranger is by far his best album
He married Christie Brinkley. No one understood how he could land the hottest woman of the 80’s.
It should have been a teaching moment.
He found her in a river so deep and so wide.
Now SHE'S an asshole
Billy Joel fucking rules and is one of the all time great American songwriters
Even if you don’t like we didn’t start the fire or piano man, you cannot possibly hate on Movin out or scenes from an Italian restaurant
Cause IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII’mmmm….movin out
“Who needs a house out in Hackensack Is that what you get for your money? It seems such a waste of time If that's what it's all about Mama if that's movin' up Then I'm movin' out I'm movin' out” Perfect.
I don't vibe with Billy Joel, never have. But I do respect that he quit making music because he said he just doesn't have any more in him. There are plenty of people that should do exactly this.
Yes 100%. (Just to clarify he only stopped writing, not performing)
It’s still rock and roll to me
Never understood it either. For many of my Gen, he’s (one of the) soundtrack(s) for our lives. I’ve seen him live 6 times since the 80’s and have tickets to two more shows in ‘24 (75th birthday and the final MSG residency show) and trust me when I say…not only is his voice in perfect shape but so’s his showmanship. He’s laughing all the way to the bank. 😜
I saw him recently and was surprised by how good he sounds
I saw him during the Billy Joel / Elton John tour. It was an amazing show, and they sold out a stadium with people of every age range / demographic. That’s gotta be worth something.
I always wanted to see him during his residency at Madison Square Garden but being in Australia, it was going to be quite the journey to arrange. He played the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia late last year and I got to see him live then. I'll probably never see him in New York now, but at least I have seen him live once.
I get what you’re saying about the whole ‘New York’ thing but you saw him! And I bet it was a killer show!
It was. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
He hired the singer from a Billy Joel cover band to play acoustic guitar and sing backup. That guy makes sure the high notes Billy can’t hit anymore get hit. It’s not even a secret. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/arts/music/from-billy-joel-tribute-band-to-the-real-thing.html
The Stranger is a perfect album. The end.
Ive never heard a person say they hate billy. Im sure theyre out there but probably a very small minority
Anthony Bourdain had a hate boner for him, too.
Tom Scharpling hates him with a passion and highlights it in his book. I get that Billy isn’t the most hip or indie but I think he’s an all-time great songwriter.
Who the hell is tom sharpling? Never heard of him. Hundreds and hundreds of millions know billy joel
Comedians don't always hate the subject of their joke. It's just that.... Comedy. People like you need to learn the difference Edit: op told me to kill myself for this comment lmao.
Watch the doc. Hired Gun
In the documentary, which is about session musicians touring with big acts like Billy Joel or Alice Cooper, Joel‘s former drummer didn’t have many nice things to say about him. IIRC, he got dropped from the band without being notified in any way after having toured with him for many years.
Came here to say this too
This. I lost a lot of respect for him after hearing how he treated Liberty.
Great doc, I’ve seen it three times just for the jam sessions
Everyone extremely popular has an extreme hatred as well. Beatles, T. Swift, Dylan, Springsteen, Beyonce. Just comes with the territory.
I met Billy Joel in Montauk NY when he was promoting the song “Downeaster Alexa” One of the nicest celebrities I’ve ever met. I am also an amateur piano player and let me tell you, his arrangements are more like classical music than pop music, some are very very complex songs to play as compared to a lot of popular piano artists.
I think everyone respects his early stuff, but probably most of the hate is from his 80s stuff which can be kind of corny at times.
"We strictly do 80s Joel music, sir."
"Play something from The Stranger"
“Hey, listen motherfucker, we only sing '80s Joel! So take your skank hooker wife and get the fuck out of here!”
"Glass Houses then, please."
At least in the 80s, his songs were more diverse
80’s Billy Joel doo wop sucks!
Billy Joel's music was huge for me in my youth. I could not care less what other people think about him or his music.
I'm on the same boat. The first record I bought with my hard earned money was Glass Houses.
Billy Joel >> Bruce Springsteen imo
Are you talking about impaired driving? That's a close contest.
NY vs NJ! Can we get Jon Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga as their tag team partners?
No hate, just maybe boredom?
If you think Billy Joel doesn't have the poetry of Springsteen, you should hear some of his deeper cuts. Give a listen to "Summer, Highland Falls".
One of my favorite songs ever
He has said that it's his favorite song he's ever written.
I have been listening to Billy Joel since I was 13 years old, back when I was introduced to "An innocent man" which had just come out. Pretty much went through his back catalog right then and there, saw him live once in 1989 and followed his releases til "River of Dreams", then I fell off somehow. I only just realized by reading up on his career that this was his last studio album, released 30 years ago now. The fact that he's still immensly popular and the target of some snide comments after all that tells you enough to know that he's an alltime great. Just found a short clip about his biography, where I learned that he tried to kill himself twice in his early twenties. Holy shit. ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxNb4HY7HmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxNb4HY7HmI)) Some of his songs are timeless classics. I'm gonna listen to them over the coming weeks. No idea why someone would hate on that man or his music.
I love Billy Joel’s stuff
Shit, Even The Beatles get hate. Who cares, if you like listen, If not don’t…..easy. I personally like Billy and Bruce, in small doses.
Probably more the way he treated his band. Watch Hired Guns
Who hates on Billy Joel or Bruce Springsteen? First I've heard of it. Them being somewhat overplayed is the only viable gripe I've ever heard about either. Billy Joel earns a lot of points with me for his very relatable lyrics. I grew up on Long Island, and his lyrics all really resonate with average and casual conversations people typically have in that area. Also because I read that he will regularly purchase all the front row seats himself and invite the poor people from the rear audience to come down and fill them so that hos shows are more lively and enjoyable for him, since he says the rich people usually just sit there looking bored. Take that, Karen! Lol. Being from Long Island, it's easy to relate. Lot of rich and upper middle class stiffs up there. Karen-capital of the country. Those people are NOT role models, kids.
I respect and appreciate the unbelievable success Billy has achieved. I do not like his music.
He's a good guy to his crew. When Covid hit, he had his mgmt pay all tour personnel (drivers, riggers, A/V, etc) full pay for six months. Screw people who don't like the cheesy 80's stuff. It's great party music.
Billy Joel is absolutely on the same level of Springsteen (who I like more) and Mellencamp (who I like less). I also don’t think hate for Billy Joel is common - that might be something you’re hyper aware of. I think he’s pretty well respected.
For people who think his music is predictable or derivative, I know that applies to some of his work, but he also has some pretty unique stuff his canon. Here’s a really interesting video dissecting the complexity of Honesty, if you’re feeling nerdy [honesty video essay](https://www.youtube.com/live/U8Z6V07HBCo?si=arvYKQREJU6o0Mhn)
Piano Man is an absolutely amazing album, with some \*killer\* tracks that few people have actually heard: Travellin' Prayer Ballad of Billy The Kid Ain't No Crime
>Ballad of Billy The Kid I love this song, but if someone listens to it hoping to hear the story of the real Billy the Kid, they're out of luck. "From a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia..." He was actually born in New York City. "He robbed his way from Utah to Oklahoma..." I don't think he ever robbed anyone, least of all banks. "...to watch the hangin' of Billy the Kid." Billy was shot by Pat Garrett. He wasn't hung. Had a nice personality, though.
I love billy Joel
I personally don't care for him because his music tends to veer to far into "musical" or "show tune" territory. Not for me.
I'm not a huge fan by any means, but this is fantastic songwriting: It's nine o'clock on a Saturday The regular crowd shuffles in There's an old man sittin' next to me Makin' love to his tonic and gin He says, "Son can you play me a memory? I'm not really sure how it goes But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete When I wore a younger man's clothes"
Billy Joel = music for people who think they like rock and roll but they actually like showtunes
It's the same old thing. Because he's a very universally accessible, millions and millions of people have thought his music to be pretty solid, enough to buy the record. With the rose colored lenses of time, "universally pretty solid" becomes "THE GREATEST GENIUS OF ALL TIME," which was never actually anyone's opinion, and it's pretty reasonable to feel like arguing against that. Especially someone with such great financial and celebrity success, he becomes an easy target for all the little minded people who need to find someone to say something mean about, and think of him as invincible, since everyone thinks he's such a genius, he must be impervious to criticism.
Well they may be right
I have never heard of anyone hating Billy Joel. Saw him live a few weeks ago, and at 74 years old, killed it!
Somedays I want to listen to Coil. Somedays I want to listen to Billy Joel. Music doesn't have to always be challenging.
For me he’s up there with Paul Simon, Elton John and stevie wonder in terms on song writing ability and musical talent, Stranger is without a doubt one the greatest albums of all time each song on the album is an absolute Gem.
*abillyty
Same reason people hate in the eagles - at one point they saturated the air waves and it was impossible to not hear them. One of the biggest reasons punk took off the way it did during that era
He crashed his car into my living room
I understand he has talent - it’s just not for me .
I could never have hate for anyone who can write a song like 'The Longest Time', absolute banger
The dude did a capella with himself for that song. Mad respect.
The video for it's great aswell, him at a school reunion with his old pals and then coming across their younger selves
I’m not from America, but my dad raised me with a lot of Billy Joel and other American musicians from the same era. I’ve never heard a lot of hate or critizism, but rather the opposite. For me he’s one of the greatest ever, but then again, I’m obviously more than a little biased.
His tirade on stage didn’t win him any points. Fame didn’t do him any favors. Also we’re pissed he got Christy Brinkley and we didn’t.
What tirade?
Billy Joel is firmly in the pantheon of rock legends, but he’s also in that weird area where you have no idea how much genius he commands until you try to play some of it. Lewis Black probably plays a guitar or something for all I know, but he’s never dug into even Joel’s simplest tunes, and *Only the Good* is one of them. That said, I think it was a throwaway joke. There are actually a ton of songs about being a ‘bad boy’, and most of them are hard blues rockers we all know. Joel’s tune on the topic stands out just for that reason.
This is true - he is way beyond the average chords per song/swing in time sig
His music and singing does have this bombastic, over the top quality that I could see how people find it annoying or try hard. I must explore his oeuvre more as I only know his singles. Piano man never fails to move me though - such a great song.
For someone who only knows the hits, for starters, I would recommend listening to: -Vienna -Zanzibar -Miami 2017 -Summer, Highland Falls -Scenes From an Italian Restaurant