Billy Joel has composed a successful Broadway musical called "Movin' Out" and I'm sure I would rather eat my own face than see it. Or any musical, for that matter.

Billy Billy Billy....

You Tin Pan Alley fucking hack.... CRAP.

But the Tin Pan stuff was way better than late-model BJ: River of Whatever, etc...

In my youth I had a fondness for the man -- "Allentown" was kinda nice, to my innocent ears (all those crazy chord changes!), before I realized what a dumb-ass self-righteous role-play it was... Then again -- do you think steelworkers in Allentown, PA dig this song? I bet it was a big hit with 'em.

OK. "Big Shot" is nice in it's own perverse way. And "Italian Restaurant" is good for a laff if you're kinda drunk. And "Uptown Girl" is funny cuz people get mad when they're riding in your car and it comes on the radio and you turn it up and sing along....

billy joel should go to hell

you know, i may prefer neil sedaka to billy joel

that is saying a lot

Crap, for providing a torch song that every poor hack who hammers away at a piano in a dive bar can play and find inspiration (and the audience singing along)

Have you ever been to one of those piano bars, like Davenport's on Milwaukee? I got dragged there once on a date, and while it was....fun in it's own way, you should have seen the regular crowd go apoplectic when the dualling piano players launched into "Piano Man" while a garish female (?) veteran of decades of off-off-off Chicago Broadway musical theater blessed the crowd with a rendition that not only was an octave lower than the original, but was also resplendent with performer-breaking-fourth-wall asides, lap sitting and audience member face-touching.

I believe there are full areas of Hell devoted to this scenario.


I still really like Allentown, unashamed.

One of my worst uncontrollable habits is to wake up and have Billy Joel's "I Go to Extremes" stuck in my head. It makes me want to die quickly. The dark dismal feeling of horror that clouds my brain overshadows any liking of billy joel that may have inadvertently slipped past my better-judgement sensors.


CRAP.

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

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.

i feel like fucking alan dershowitz on here - why do i have to be the only one to defend this lush... sigh... ok,

there are way too many soley aesthetic-based opinions flying around here - and that my friends, is pure circumstantial evidence. he had some damn, DAMN catchy little songs. examples:

ny state of mind, just the way you are, only the good die young, you may be right, still rock and roll to me, tell her about it, uptown girl. not one of those is anything less than a damn good pop song.

now, as i understand the rules of this game, we have to account for the post-peak albums of artist just as much as peak work, so for this, he gets a crap vote from me as well. but again, to paint billy joel as the epitome of crap is silly.

hers another thing. billy joel is singular. yes, he's the most derivative motherfucking songwriter on the planet, but when you hear 2 seconds of a billy joel song, you know its him, even if you dont know the song.

stephensolo wrote:i feel like fucking alan dershowitz on here

That's cool. Go right ahead; just don't try to get married. Wait--that isn't how you mean that, is it? Sorry, then; just forget I said that.

stephensolo wrote:hers another thing. billy joel is singular. yes, he's the most derivative motherfucking songwriter on the planet, but when you hear 2 seconds of a billy joel song, you know its him, even if you dont know the song.

See, that's the reason he gets CRAP from me. Sure, they're catchy. Sure, they're identifiable as him, even as they're totally derivative. It is true that he has songwriting and playing chops. And he has chosen to use these powers for EVIL. For this, we cannot forgive him.