Though he has faded in and out of cultural relevancy over the last three decades, Billy Joel has remained one of the iconic players in my personal musical repertoire for the two and half decades and counting of my life. He has played with different styles and meanings, penning carefree love songs (“The Longest Time”), superficial social commentaries (“Uptown Girl”), harder message songs (“Good Night Saigon”), not shying away from a dab of introspection (“River of Dreams,” “Keeping the Faith”), and hitting many points in between. But what Billy may remain most well-known for is one of his earliest hits, which probably best be described as a universal bar song—“Piano Man.”
I hadn’t listened to Billy Joel for a while. I got to see him perform in Syracuse a couple years back. It was a great show, but at the same time, it sort of felt like a capstone event for my fanship—I didn’t run home wanting to listen to more
of him so much as I got the sense I had just enjoyed the culmination of that piece of my musical life and could put it to rest. In the spirit of this blog, and as I think other mixes posted here would attest, the appreciation of a particular musical act, at least for me, never truly dies. It may rest for a bit, but there will be a revival, and that point, perhaps a reinterpretation or flat out reinvention of how you understand an artist and his songs. And with that, of course, comes new mixes.
Billy Joel returned to my consciousness upon a recent read of Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, in which Klosterman has the following to say: “Joel is the only rock star I’ve never wanted to be … Every one of Joel’s important songs—including the happy ones—are ultimately about loneliness … like the way it feels when you’re being hugged by someone and it somehow makes you sadder.” I’m not sure I agree with Klosterman’s assessment completely, but I will concede his companion point, that Joel is, for all his fanfare and his prolific body work, still not cool. And perhaps it is that vaguely dopy quality, coupled with an understanding of the lonely hug that has made him so accessible, memorable, and ultimately important for myself and others like me.
Without further ado, the mix:
01. “Christie Lee”
02. “This Night”
03. “Uptown Girl”
04. “All About Soul”
05. “And So It Goes”
06. “Summer, Highland Falls”
07. “Just The Way You Are”
08. “New York State of Mind”
09. “Only the Good Die Young”
10. “River of Dreams”
11. “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”
12. “She’s Always A Woman”
13. “2000 Years”
14. “Keeping the Faith”
15. “We Didn’t Start The Fire”
16. “Baby Grand”
17. “Piano Man”
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