Help Me Pinpoint the Moment Billy Joel Became Worthless

Probably Storm Front. There's some stuff on there I like, but it's the beginning of the end.

Uptown Girl was the first thing that came to mind when I read the title.

Does this mean Devin and I are in "agreeance" on a musical topic? The apocalypse is nigh!

All the ingredients are on Greatest Hits 3

The title theme to Rodney Dangerfield's Easy Money was prophetic.

Um...around Piano Man?

There's stuff on An Innocent Man (the album "Uptown Girl" is on) that's not bad, and the one after it, the Bridge, had "Baby Grand" and "Big Man on Mulberry Street," which are decent.

But his last truly solid album was the Nylon Curtain, right before An Innocent Man. So "Uptown Girl" sounds like a pretty valid cutoff.

Glass Houses is the first rock album I ever really got into (on 8-track!).

Actually, just looking over the ubl.com listing of his albums, I'm thinking I might pick up some of the early ones on CD. I think Joel's inherent assholery in interviews turned me off of his work for a while.

Like most great 70's talents, the 80's ate their souls and forced them to play horrifically garish synthesised keyboard sounds whilst swimming in a sea of their own liquifying septum.

I was listening to The Stranger the other day and even Everybody Has A Dream has enough cheesy soul to make it leaps and bounds above post-Christie Brinkley "Fat Bill".

Between him and Peter Gabriel, "High & Mighty" stocks muct be soaring...

It'll always be Turnstiles for me all the way...

I reject your assumption that Billy Joel EVER had intrinsic worth.

That said, I always thought "Downeaster Alexa" off, I believe, Storm Front was a career highlight for the favorite cabaret singer of every "classic rock" station.

Yeah, i'd say Uptown Girl is probably the cut-off. But Piano Man proves he was great once. God damn I love that song.

Dokken wrote a hair-metal song about the nuclear destruction of Paris; what's your point?

Yeah, but is there anything cooler than the Mafia taking over Mexico?

Of course not, but that's not really "music"....

I find it funny that he chose to play this song at the Concert for New York City. And I never pictured it as a nuclear attack, more of a massive earthquake, kind of like in Batman: Cataclysm.

After hearing the story behind Uptown Girls this week, I'm not so dismissive of the song any more, but musically it's obviously not his best work. But, this was the only thread I could find that involved Billy Joel, and I just wanted to state how awesome he is.

See, and I was going to answer the question by saying "First time he opened his mouth." But seeing as you're a fan, I guess I won't.

I misread the thread title as Billy Joe. That being said, my answer remains "The very beginning".

He was awesome in the 70's and very early 80's. Awesome. He and Elton John have had similar falls.

Heh, thank you. I still love him.

She's Got A Way, Captain Jack, New York State of Mind, pretty much everything on The Stranger (especially Vienna), Allentown, Pressure (it crosses the border from cheesy 80's into crazy 80's), The Longest Time (before every acapella group this side of 10th grade got their hands on it), Baby Grand, The Downeaster 'Alexa', are all great stuff.

No matter how much crap he's put out, the dude gave the world Summer, Highland Falls and Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway). For that, we should be grateful.

I don't give a shit what anyone says. "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" rules your fucking ass. "Brenda and Eddie were the popular steadies, they were the king and the queen of the prom..."

That. Sorry, y'all. Maybe I just need to give him another fair go, but I've never really been able to stand him.

I would like to put Brenda and Eddie in a room with Jack and Diane and Tommy and Gina and then blow that fucking room up.

I'm a 52nd Street/Glass Houses-era Joel fan. Can't stand anything post-Innocent Man or his early, whiny stuff. I'm probably in the minority in that I fucking loathe Piano Man with every fiber of my being, so if that renders my opinion invalid, so be it.

It validates it for me...I can't fucking STAND that song.

Overall, I'm indifferent to Billy Joel. Piano rock doesn't really turn my crank, but I can recognize that he has a couple of good songs here and there.

Piano Man's the worst. Billy Joel's written a handful of songs that would qualify as "the worst", and those tend to be the ones to get the most radio play, so I understand people not standing him.

Got it. Yeah, Piano Man is the song that I always think of whenever I think of Joel. I'll check out some of his other non-radio played stuff.

My suggestion would be just listening to the album "The Stranger". If that doesn't get you, I don't imagine much else will.

I'm the dude screaming in STEP BROTHERS, "Play something from STRANGGGEEERRRR!"

"Fuck you motherfucker, we only play 80's Joel!"

I remember really liking And So It Goes. It had just the right amount of melancholy for what the song was.

I saw Billy Joel live once. At the end of the show he said, "And remember, don't drive drunk... drive home in the back of your limousine!" which got a response from my date, "Gee, how proletariat of him."

Ha ha, Billy Joel loves to drunk drive.

God, he looks so unhealthy now. One of those people you can almost smell the cholesterol wafting off of.

"Piano Man" will always be associated with drunken white frat boys huddled in a circle drunken swaying back and forth and screaming the lyrics as loud as they can during last call at bars. I loathe that song with all my being.

Agreed that The Stanger is Joel at his best. "Just the Way You Are" is a personal fave.

About a year ago, I was shopping for a couch. I spent all day Saturday driving around to various furniture stores around the city. I was in the car for so long that day and flipped around the radio dial so much that I managed to hear "Piano Man" twice. I discovered, to my horror, that I know all the words.

My hope for the man I might someday be died that day.

True confession: every time I hear "My Life", I always think of the opening credits of Bosom Buddies.

Am I the only one disappointed Joel never updated "We Didn't Start The Fire?" There's twenty years of history worth speak-singing/faux-rapping about, brother!

Possibly.

Lullabye does it for me. Maybe it's because of my little girl, but I'm a sucker for that one. And I'll second And So It Goes...

This almost sounds like a Chewer dare: create the faux, 1990-2010 version of We Didn't Start The Fire.

"TSA, Jon-Benet, what else do I have to say!"

I always thought it'd be fun if he did a version based on his career after he released that. "Divorce, car crash, rehab, car crash, divorce, divorce, rehab, car crash."

Just want to second this.

This guy's songs are so ingrained in my childhood that I can't not love him. At his best he's like early Tom Waits or Springsteen only with McCartney's ear for melody. And the slick pop stuff like Uptown Girl and We Didn't Start The Fire may be cheesy, but it's genius cheese.

Main problem with him as far as I can tell is that he's not very consistent. It's like he's only capable of writing two kinds of songs - timeless pop classics that it's hard to imagine never existing, or dreary filler tracks. Even by Storm Front he was knocking out great songs, but aside from maybe The Stranger I'm not sure I'd feel the need to own more than a greatest hits album or two.

I have a theory that if he'd found himself an edgier, artsier counterpart to offset his inconsistency and general dorkiness, he could've created something like an american Beatles.

Give the guy this: he could still be putting out pop albums just to cash in on longtime fans' adoration (most of which is deserved - despite the crap he's put out more great music than any of us ever will) but he doesn't. Isn't that right, Mr. McCartney?

Much respect... And I get the hate. But I have a soft spot for Piano Man. I always sing it a capella at soundchecks.

Karaoke song? Yes. Sometimes. Though I'm more prone to belt out Honesty in that environment.

Love Billy Joel unabashedly is why. But, if pressed, I'd say The Nylon Curtain was the beginning of the end.

Though subsequent albums produced the occasional fantastic pop song (A Matter Of Trust, An Innocent Man, I Go To Extremes...)

And, yes, We Didn't Start The Fire. Do people often talk about how that song is a blatant rip-off of REM's It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)? They should talk about that. Because it most certainly is.

You say that as if it were unique to you. Trust me. We all think about the opening credits of Bosom Buddies.

Same here. I used to sing it to my little girl before bed.

I don't live with her any more. A couple of weeks ago, she had her mom call me so I could sing it over the phone before bed.

I cried for 25 minutes.

Absolutely.

I actually compare him to Springsteen. Springsteen is the poet, the genius, the minstrel of the working class.

Joel embodies middle class American suburbia on such a pure and direct level that it also accomplishes a kind of genius.

You can rail on him for becoming cheesy. But he's still a great pop lyricist. And people also forget that he's a genuinely funny man.

The Entertainer has a great, satirical and self-depracating kick to it that - being the Morrissey fan that I am - is just brilliant.

His early work, as has been mentioned, has many spectacular highs. Seconding the love for The Stranger. That album is fantastic. But Turnstiles and 52nd Street aren't slouches either.

Laughed my ass off at this.

River of Dreams is when I tuned out. Not only is that title track absolutely horrendous, he sang that song about his newborn baby and called it a lullaby or some shit like that. I actually really liked Storm Front when it first came out, especially the song "I Go To Extremes." As long you own a Greatest Hits record from his early years, your BJ collection is complete. The Stranger is ridiculously good, though.

Okay, so I stopped at the house of a friend of mine last night for an unrelated reason and borrowed Glass Houses and The Stranger. I had to stick around the office tonight after everyone left early (on account of it being Thanksgiving Eve) because I had shit I needed to do, so I through the CDs on.

It took me a few songs to realize my main problem with him. You see, my parents used to listen to him a lot when the stuff was new. Another thing they did a lot is fight during that era. Pretty much constantly. So when I hear these songs, I also subconsciously hear two people screaming at each other, words saturated with regret and disgust. It's anti-nostalgia. Nostalgia gone bad.