Genre and Discourse

Since the release of his first album in 1971, and his very popular Piano Man album in 1973, it’s hard for even those who claim not to be fans of Billy Joel to say he is not one of the most influential solo musicians of the late 20th Century. The Long Island native carved a name for himself early in life and became a shining example of talent, skill, and exceptional songwriting. Over the years, countless books, interviews, and articles have been written to analyze the legend, and many conclude that he is just that: a legend. Personally, reading the backstories of songs and albums and the analyses of these bring a deeper understanding to the man himself.

As much as he is a talented musician, Joel’s charisma certainly helped with the fame he garnered. In an interview from 1977, the year he released his fifth album, The Stranger, Joel is a cool, nonchalant, young 27-year-old, explaining how he created the Ballad of Billy the Kid intro from the Magnificent 7 theme. In that same interview, Joel displays his skill by also explaining how his music differs from musicians that he was often compared to, by easily turning to the piano he’s sitting at and playing any style with ease, all while keeping his cool, careless attitude. Even at his elder age of today, he continues to exude that kind of charisma. In an interview with Vulture in 2018, he still has a way of answering each question with personality, often times answering with jokes or anecdotes about his career.

However, not everyone in the world is as enamored with Joel as his fans are. Take this album review site, Aphoristic Album Reviews, where they state that Joel is “a tier two guy who made it into tier one sales” in reference to his album. Obviously, that can be seen as a controversial opinion, but the writer does make some good points. For example, Cold Spring Harbor is one of my favorite albums of all time, but Aphoristic gave that album a 3/10! Clearly, I don’t agree with that assertion, but valid points are made such as comparing Joel to Paul McCartney for sounding “like part of the singer-songwriter trend of the early 1970s”. Valid point. Then you look on another small site of album reviews, such as “DM’s Rock Music Site”, which gives Cold Spring Harbor a 3½ star review, higher than their reviews of some of his other albums, unlike Aphoristic’s review. It’s all subjective!

By no means am I the first person to cover the success and skills of Joel in a critical sense. Many fan sites such as this exist out there on the internet singing Joel’s praises. One in particular, One Final Serenade, is a fan site I found that discusses the influence of Billy Joel’s music on the lives of fans as well as the music scene at large, as I’ve stated. Among the writings, it talks of his “timeless and poetic” music, despite not creating a whole new genre. This dedicated fan created an entire website, going through each and every song Joel has performed and created a webpage with the song’s lyrics, with special images related to the song and long descriptions with information about the song. Not every musician has fans like this. Sure, many artists have superfans, but it takes someone like Billy Joel to so deeply affect the lives of so many for someone to make such a site. Another site, A Billy Joel Photo Website, is just that, a website displaying tons of photos, old and new, of Joel that you never really see anywhere else. This could be seen as obsessive, of course, but for someone who loves an artist as much as Billy Joel fans love Billy Joel, it all makes sense.