Billy Joel is/was a musical hack. Listen to "Piano Man" and try to convince yourself that it was worth the $5 you shelled out for it when you found it in the bargain bin.
A pop genius. So is Paul McCartney, Wilson and Benny Anderson from ABBA. None of them are on the level of Bach and Mozart either. That’s a silly objection. The ‘Piano Man’ album is mediocre early work that doesn’t even sound like him. Why judge an artist by their weakest work? When he got going he wrote a grab bag of standards...’NY State of Mind’, ‘Allentown’...
Billy Joel is a magnificent musical genius. As far as those other three guys you mentioned?
Bor - ing...
I couldn’t name two songs by any of them.