my very first impression was probably how much I could hear stuff that Ben Folds pretty clearly draws from. There are a couple songs in the first album that really made me understand the comparisons people make between Ben Folds and Billy Joel. Like, both do piano, the piano man, right I get it. But there were a couple songs in that first album that just, so much so, the rhythm and function of the keyboard in the song, it’s just totally the same. So that was interesting.
As far as what I actually thought of Billy Joel… he’s alright. I was really very meh on him up until The Stranger. I thought those first four albums were all very just-fine-i-guess. There were some songs I liked, the ones I already knew, the ones enshrined as “classics”, the ones that charted and stuff. But the rest of it, eh. Take it or leave it, y’know?
Then we get to The Stranger and it’s pretty good. I was worried I’d just keep not liking any of the albums, but The Stranger is solid, it turned it around pretty well. Which checks out, it’s the album that made him huge. I can understand why, it’s good. I don’t think I think it’s stellar, I don’t know about 10 million copies sold level and double grammies, but like yeah it’s pretty undeniably solid. And it’s got Movin’ Out, I love that song. 52nd Street and Glass Houses are also very good, they’ve both got two or three famous songs I already knew, good songs, and they’ve both got a lot of songs I like that I didn’t know beforehand. Nylon Curtain is still pretty good, Innocent Man I don’t actually super love but it does have The Longest Time and Uptown Girl, so it gets points for that. The rest are pretty meh again. So it ends up being a weak ending, strong three or four albums in the middle, and then kinda a weak ending again. Billy Joel also composed a 70 minute work of music for piano, Fantasies and Delusions, performed by Hyung-Ki Joo, which is alright. My strongest reaction to that is that I think it’s neat that he made it.
So, all around, he’s pretty good I suppose. I don’t love him, and there’s not a ton of his music that I really love. Mostly he’s pretty good and alright, and at his best I have a hard time saying more than, “Yeah, he’s pretty good, he’s solid.” And he’s not always at his best, a lot of the times he’s just fine. So I’m gonna give it a generally enjoyable, with highlights, B
Billy Joel complete, now listening to: Tom Cardy
tunafruitsandwitch 