Degradation wrote:I never bought into anything this guy did, and I live in Long Island. I know where one of his incredible mansions on Lloyd Neck was before he sold it. The guy is an alcoholic ego maniac. He named one of his albums Cold Spring Harbor, which is the name of one of the villages on Long Island. Real original album title asswipe........and he gets into more car "accidents" than any musician I can recall. I don't know how his PR people do such a good job in keeping up his undeniable "genius" image that some people have of him, but I pray for the day that image crumbles.

My ex-girlfriend had an experience with him when she was very young and she swares by it. Her uncle(I think it was just her Dads friend, but she called him Uncle)was looking at BJ's house because he was interested in buying it. He had this staircase that looked like piano keys. My ex, who was about 6 or 7 was running up and down them. Now this is how she quoted him......"Get your god-damned kid off my stairs..." Her Dad remembers the incident as well and said he was a real piece of shite.

henceforth.....

CRAP

didnt he sell his mansion to jerry seinfeld for 26 million.

and jerry then more or less ripped the whole thing down and started again.

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:Anyone who would write "making love to his tonic & gin" just to save the rhyme is the the most egregious species of hack. It's a fucking gin and tonic, Billy. Ever been to a goddamn bar?

this washington post writermade the case for the worst line in piano man being, "they're sharing a drink they call loneliness." he had convincing reasons.
there's a poll at the top and then some analysis halfway down the page. it's about as much fun as reading a chat transcript gets.

I voted crap but the truth is I have never taken him seriously enough to form an intelligent opinion.

I must also admit a prejudice against all piano rock, be it the sandpaper crooning of Tom Waits, the frothy jubilation of Elton John, or the pensive, subversive wit of Warren Zevon, some of whose songs I actually like (The French Inhaler, especially).

Still, to me, Billy Joel is no different than U2 or Yanni or Clint Black. Music I just cannot understand.

Angus Jung wrote:Billy Joel is the living embodiment of CRAP, but I would truly love to hear his first band, Attila, someday:

http://usuarios.lycos.es/stormfront/atila.htm

I have this, somewhere. It's magnificently stupid.

Gershwin for jocks.

SchnappM wrote:

Justin from Queens wrote:This is the easiest one ever. Ever ever ever.

This is easier than "The Communards". This is easier than "Air Supply, Reunited". This is even easier than "Air Supply playing the song 'Reunited'".

Billy Joel almost deserves his own game. The game should be - "yeah, that's bad, but Billy Joel is worse."

Worse than Burzum.
Worse than the last incarnation of Menudo.
Worse than RaHoWa.

You can't come up with anything worse than Billy Joel. It's terrible beyond terrible that I have ever heard one of his songs, much less know how to hum it. That in itself is a wide sweeping, irrefutable damnation of the music industry. "What's wrong with commercial entertainment, you curmudgeon?" "Billy Joel."

I've got to stop typing now. I've got to go do something else for a bit. I'm compelled to go on and on, but I shouldn't. This started as fun, but now I'm getting angry.

There's a windshield out there, somewhere, that will sever his gurgling jugular and bring an end to this awfulness. I hope that they're installing it right now on some overpriced Maybach, set for speedy delivery to Long Island, USA. I hope that car sails off the LIE soon, just outside of King's Park. I also hope that in his last drunken death throes, flailing about, his knee smacks the radio. In this pleasant fantasy, the radio scans to WFMU, playing the Merzbox end to end. I would like Mr. Joel to listen to this as the car catches fire and his wife's plastic tits begin to melt.

= Justin

That's pretty harsh.

"That's pretty harsh" is so funny to read after a car crash in which someone's wifes tits melt.

I used to like a girl who really liked Billy Joel. We never ended up dating, but I still ended up buying a few Billy Joel records on a whim at a used record store one day because they were really cheap. In retrospect this was not a good decision, because now I'm pretty embarrassed about this chapter in my life. I didn't really like Billy Joel, though.

True story.

Moral of the story: girls who like Billy Joel don't like boys who like the Magnetic Fields. You can't argue with facts.

Okay, I have to weigh in.
I can't vote, because I think Billy Joel is a cancer. I also think he's a genius. At the same time!

He has recorded a lot of crap over the years. Tons of crap. More crap then not. Take away all the 'easy crap'. Now you have his jewels. The best of Billy Joel. What do you say about this?

On one hand, it's still crap. It's catchy crap, but you know instinctively "There's something so wrong here." It's sooo vanilla. He's not the son of rock and roll at ALL. He's the son of Neil Sedaka and Bobby Freaking Vee.

Still, he is clever - very clever. And what's that song (everything with B.J. is 'What's that song...everyone knows but no one pays close attention?') "Come out Virginia, don't let it wait?" That song just moves. And the part in "Big Shot" where he just goes "oh - oh! - oo-woo-ooh-whoa-ooo-whoa"? That is neat. There's tons of little jewels like that ,even in some otherwise completely crappy songs. 4-8 awesome bars. A neat chord/key change. A diminished chord in an uptempo 'rocker' (using that word loosely).

I think he is garbage - talented, vanilla garbage. Not fit for rock, but musicals. I am sure he is an asshole. Bob Segar has done more for rock and roll than Billy Joel - hey, Segar wrote "Her Strut" at least. But I think Joel's more talented, a better songsmith than Segar. And when you start reaching to the likes of Bob and his Silver Bullet Band to put Billy on higher ground, you're really reaching.

I bet he's an asshole. There's a few of his songs I won't turn off the radio.

I am drunk