“The Mexican Connection,” Streetlife SerenadeĪn instrumental that sounds like the rights-free music people use in YouTube videos. His Lawn Guyland worldview comes from an honest place, and when he writes about, say, Anthony (who works in a grocery store, saving his pennies for someday), that guy rings true.ġ21. He’s best when writing about his own time and his own world.I’ll admit that the brake screech in “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” is fun.
#BILLY JOEL DISCOGRAPHY STREETLIFE TV#
The shattering sound that opens Glass Houses, the helicopters in “Goodnight Saigon,” TV static and dial tones: All are gimmicky, and most are cliché. Outrage can bring greatness to art irritability, not so much. Too many songs have a chin-jutting defiance, an insistence that I Am an Artist to Be Taken Seriously, as subtext. Other times, we too often hear classical-music references or an awkward French lesson. The best example is “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” a great-sounding pop song whose lyrics suffer from a general annoyance at all the critical love showered on the CBGB crowd.
#BILLY JOEL DISCOGRAPHY STREETLIFE PLUS#
Ground rules: I’ve limited this to the 114 songs Joel wrote and recorded on his 12 studio albums, from Cold Spring Harbor (1971) through River of Dreams (1993), plus seven additional singles he has released over the years. A close listening to the Joel-ian canon reveals a couple of generous handfuls of greatness, forgotten cuts that deserve to be resurfaced, familiar hits that have aged poorly, and flat-out clunkers. That said, appreciation does not mean blindness, and Joel himself would agree that not every song on every album catches fire (though he did light it, and we tried to fight it). But the ranking draws on 30 years of soaking in these songs, plus multiple repeat playings of every one over the past three months. Stipulated: This is all one listener’s opinion. “Dad rock,” one of my younger colleagues said, unimpressed, when I told her about this project: relistening to the 121 songs that Joel has written and recorded, and ranking every one. It’s certainly not very cool for an arts editor to defend Billy Joel.
People who write paeans to the suburbs, on topics that sit on the cusp between white-collar and blue-collar, are unfashionable these days. I grew up right off the Jersey Turnpike, halfway between Levittown and Allentown, during the years when he was on the radio every day. The argument is headed in this direction: He’s not quite the hard-rock star he sometimes tried to be, but he’s a better pop songwriter than you remember, and sometimes a great one. Lately, though - like every artist from a generation back - he is undergoing a critical reassessment, despite some dissenters.
Robert Christgau called his 1976 album Turnstiles “obnoxious,” which it is not. They used to beat him up for his perceived lack of edge. Most of those charted in the era when you had to sell a lot of records to get there, too.įor critics, he’s a problem. That’s about a quarter of the songs he’s written and recorded. The New Yorker’s profile of him last year pointed out that he’s had 33 songs in the Top 40. * He has established a standing residency there, like a guy who plays a monthly nightclub gig, except that the club happens to seat 18,000.īy the measure of hit-making, his stats are staggering. It’s been 21 years since Joel released a new pop album, yet he sold out the arena 12 times in 2014 alone, and he’ll play his second (also sold-out) show of 2015 on February 18. Photo: Maya Robinson and Photo by Larry Marano/Getty Imagesīilly Joel is the closest thing Madison Square Garden has to a sure thing - certainly more than the Knicks or the Rangers or the Liberty.
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