Search And Destroy: Billy Joel

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.