Glass Houses* has my favorite non Greatest Hits.
Something about “Uptown Girl” just sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Actually, that’s not true – fingernails on a chalkboard don’t really bother me. Most of his other greatest hits are all right in my book.
I celebrate his entire musical catalog…
NOT…
Only the good die young
Uptown girl
are o.k.
everything else…feh!
Don’t flame me; I didn’t start the thread fire whatever…
You mad, bro?
Well, I only have the ‘Essentials’ in my music collection, and there’s quite a few tracks that I have a 6/12 rating for, but nothing lower. Including “Leave a tender moment alone.”
So I’ll agree with the ‘not really bad, but boring’ assessment.
I like Billy Joel, but “Uptown Girl” is an awful song, sung horribly.
I dislike the whole “Storm Front” album. Every song feels like it’s trying too hard, is missing the infectious barroom finger-snapping vibe of previous works, and lands with a clumsy plop.
I think it’s possible to have a bad song that doesn’t exist. Occasionally you’ll hear an artist say something like, “I think I’ve still got a few good songs/books/films in me.”
The notion is that although the songs/books/films don’t presently exist, the artist still “has” them in some sense.
We usually encounter this concept as part of a positive outlook (good songs to come) but there’s no reason for it not to be even MORE applicable in the negative. (“Yeah, I think I still have thousands of songs in me, but unfortunately they all suck.”)
“Better send me money, or I’ll record them and let people download them for free.” :eek:
Sounds like a business model.
I’ve never been able to develop any fondness for Say Goodbye to Hollywood, because he oversings so much in that song that I find it too distracting to actually listen to the song.
Heh, actually the topic has gone in the direction I was hoping for: Namely people listing the Billy Joel songs they hate/can’t stand/think horrible.
I suppose I could have just asked, plainly “What Billy Joel songs are the worst, in your opinion?”, but I figured with the topic title this one has, it’d get more replies just out of people wanting to voice their different opinion to the pre-set one already made.
I truly hate Uptown Girl, but this is largely because I used to open the doors to a pub and a guy used to come in and put it on the juke box 10 times in a row - every night.
I have a lot of respect for his craft, (Billy Joel - not the guy in the pub) but Just The Way You Are is a far better constructed song than anything else he’s done IMNSHO.
MiM
“It’s Still Rock n’ Roll to Me”: lounge lizard thinks he can sound like a punk rocker, fails miserably. Song just kind of plods along lifelessly, no discernable guitars. I cringe every time I am forced to hear this somewhere.
I find the Brenda and Eddie part of “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” painful to listen to.
When I was younger, the guys hated all Billy Joel songs. Except for Piano Man. That one they liked.
I generally like Billy Joel’s work, though “She’s Always a Woman” is one of his weaker songs. The Piano Man album is a great one. And Billy Joel is one of the five best lyricists in rock.
I did see one critic who said the problem with Joel is that he’s really a Broadway type of songwriter and forty years ago he’d be doing Broadway shows. I can see that – he’s got the similar ability with song hooks and lyrics that the best Broadway composers have. It’s too bad he’s only been represented by Movin’ Out, with Twyla Tharpe’s absolutely horrendous choreography and nothing much going for it storywise.
Hee, hee. You sound like Wilson from “House.”. In the episode in which House’s father died, the storyline had House and Wilson meet because some guy in a bar kept playing “Leave A Tender Moment Alone” until Wilson flipped out and threw a bottle at a bar mirror and was arrested. House paid Wilson’s bail.
I had to rub my eyes with my fists and re-read this sentence to confirm that it said what I thought it said. It did.
mmm,
…wondering if Davy is still in the navy
Lol, I agree, that line from Piano Man is truly wretched! Also: “and the piano it sounds like a carnival…and the microphone smells like a beer.” It doesn’t just smell like beer, it smells like A beer.
I like Big Shot, though. That one does have some clever lyrics. The Stranger isn’t bad.
I’ve noticed that, for the most part, his best stuff is the stuff that WASN’T played on the radio. I love just about his entire catalog. If I had to pick a worst song, though, I think I’d go with “Uptown Girl.”
Don’t misunderstand me; I love Billy Joel. But that song just kind of epitomizes the worst of the 80’s for me.
I’m a fan, but came in here to nominate two tunes I haven’t seen mentioned yet – Get It Right The First Time (he didn’t) and Everybody Has A Dream (mine is that you had passed on recording that ditty, Bill).