Like that's saying something...
Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.
And dont sleep on these two, either.
Compared to the talentless hacks of today’s pop music scene, Billy Joel is a Titan.
According to RIAA, Joel is in the top 6 of all time album sales with almost 80 million, so he’s doing OK. Only two other solo performers have more album sales than Joel and that’s Elvis Presley and Garth Brooks.
“Why, exactly, is Billy Joel so bad?”
Probably because he stole Piano Man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SW2peqkJsI
This thread stinks...not a single photo of Christie Brinkley?
All of them suck, but I’ll name two that were very good...Harry Chapin and Harry Nilson (just a coincidence that they’re both named Harry), and Bob Dylan was not, is not a “pop singer”, rather he has always been a poet, an artist with words, an ORIGINAL, whether you like him or not, and his voice, however bad, is merely a vehicle for his poetry.
Also, Billy Joel, a mediocrity, and Andrew Wyeth, a great draftsman/technician/painter don’t equate at all.
There are songwriters/bands/singers who are somewhat timeless---they steadily turn out good stuff and occasionally have a hit;
Then there are the one-hit wonders, of whom we're all familiar (Ace, "How Long has this Been Goin' On?")
More puzzling are the bands/songwriters who turn out an absolutely incredible album, where almost every song is a classic or cutting edge, then they never seem to recapture it.
Think of Boz Scaggs, "Silk Degrees," or, for you older rockers, "Moby Grape" by Moby Grape, where every song was refreshing. Billy Joel's "The Stranger" was one of those albums. I don't know how many #1 hits he had off that, but it was a few.
While I’m not much of a Bill Joel fan, though I did go to one of his concerts many years ago (late 70s, early 80s), and thought that he was a fantastic performer.
This is the sort of dreck I’d expect from “slate.” There is FAR worse pop music out there than Billy Joel’s. The fact that the writer is making a big deal of it is simply to try to tie his fame to a famous name, especially someone in a downward slide of addiction. This writer is doing nothing more than trying to use Billy Joel as a “step up” is his pitiful excuse for a career.
Mark
I actually hope to live long enough to watch aging rappers get booed off the stage for slurring the words into one long spew of Vomit Carnage...
Billy Joel is a bazillion times better than any of the crap music popular today.
I think people have artistic allergies, much like hay fever or asthma.
For me, it’s Neil Diamond and Chicago.
Also, any of the songs about astronauts that came out at the beginning of the 70’s, like those of Elton John and Harry Nilsson.
Bruce Springsteen makes Billy Joel sound like Pavarotti.
Want something to really make your ears bleed, here in Michigan they are advertising the Billy Joel/Elton John concert/extravaganza. As if things weren’t bad enough in Michigan.
While Andrew Wyeth may not have been another Da Vinci, sentimental schlock art is better epitomized by the works of Thomas Kinkade. As for title of the worst pop singer ever there are so many choices it would be almost impossible to decide.
” Okay! Who's hot boxing the dube!?”
Like that's saying something...
Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.
And dont sleep on these two, either.
I’ve always liked Billy Joel, and I make no apologies for it. “The Stranger” is still one of the greatest pop albums ever.
Billy jumped the shark during/after his divorce from Christie Brinkley. I saw him suring his first tour after the divorce and he was drinking the entire time and bordering on incoherency. His voice has never been the same.
And of course, that unforgettable one hit wonder, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy!
But "New York State of Mind" has become a classic, played with the songs of the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Rogers and Hart ...
Maybe it's because those standards in the "Great American Songbook" are already so closely associated with New York, but still it is an accomplishment for someone of Billy's generation.
"Vienna" ... not so good, too much of a confection, like Vienna Thins or Cafe Vienna.
FWIW, the Joels were very successful in business in Germany before Hitler. Billy's father left his mother after the war and returned to Europe, starting up a new family in of all places, Vienna. His half-brother, Alexander, is a prominent classical conductor.