For an instant I tried to come up with a witty title for this post. But I decided that all my emotion would be lost in translation and that really brutal honesty would best serve me here.
For some reason, Billy Joel came up in conversation amongst friends the other day. I added my two cents by stating the exact title to this post, I hate Billy Joel. I guess I was really not prepared at how offended my friends would be at this statement. They were livid and vexed. They just couldn't understand where I was coming from. The first question posed to me was the obvious one, How could you not like Billy Joel? This was , I guess, a rhetorical question because I was not given the chance to answer, but instead was immediately asked, You mean you don't like "Piano Man," how could you not like "Piano Man?" At his point I felt my very legitimacy as a human being was questioned, and how do you honestly convince people that you really are a human being and not a cyberkinetic bio-organism. So I just shrugged my shoulders and said that I thought he was a wanker. Now this was an odd response that was met with a few awkward seconds of silence. The reason being is that I'm not British, and neither is Billy Joel (though sometimes it seems his New York accent wavers between Long Island the British Isl(and)e's). I'm not quite sure why I chose that word. I almost called him a douchebag but realized that would be slightly harsh and kind of move my hatred of Billy Joel from him as an artist to him as a person. Wanker seemed like a good term at the time since it is not a term that we Americans use very often and is therefore relatively harmless.
Anyway, the silence was soon lifted when my friend Kevin then asked me what I still think is the most perplexing question I've ever been asked. He looked me straight in the eyes and asked, Well, then who DO you like? As I said, this question was mind-numbingly perplexing, but also one of the most interesting questions ever asked of me. It was simultaneously extremely vague and extremely specific. I could answer the question in any number of ways. I could have went through my entire catalogue of favorite bands/artists or I could have named one band/artist that I did like. But neither of those answers would have satisfied Kevin. His question, though worded broadly, was actually much more specific. He wanted to know that if I couldn't possibly like Billy Joel, who on Earth could replace that special place in his own heart currently occupied by Billy Joel. Or even if it wasn't that personal, who could possibly take Billy Joel's place in Kevin's perceived idea of the American musical canon. It was obvious that to Kevin and the others that Billy Joel was an artist of consequence, someone who mattered, someone who, in effect, changed the world we live in (i.e. the world would be much different if this person had never existed), someone who was irreplaceable. Now, though Kevin really earnestly wanted an answer, the fact was that his question was virtually impossible to answer. It became completely obvious to me that no matter who I mentioned, that person could never take the place of Billy Joel for Kevin. I was stuck between a rock and hard place. So I chose to take the route of fake misunderstanding. I asked what he meant by the question and then faked frustration with the question by saying, What! You want me to just name my favorite bands? Fine. And then I proceeded to name whatever bands came to the top of my head and have since been slightly embarrassed by my list: Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and Poison. The reason I'm embarrassed is that I realize that this answer was completely unsatisfactory for Kevin and that in reality these bands don't hold a candle to the lyrical abilities and music talents of Billy Joel.
This last sentence may confuse you slightly. Look, just because I hate Billy Joel doesn't mean I don't recognize his talents as a musician. So then, why DO I hate Billy Joel? Well, I couldn't really put my finger on it until I read what Chuck Klosterman had to say about him in his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Klosterman, a Billy Joel fan, highlights the uncoolness of Billy Joel:
Nobody would ever claim that Billy Joel is cool in the conventional sense, particularly if they're the kind of person who actively worries about what coolness is supposed to mean....
...by and large, the musical component of rock isn't nearly as important as the iconography and the posturing and the idea of what we're supposed to be experiencing. If given the choice between hearing a great band and seeing a cool band, I'll take the latter every single time; this is why the Eagles suck. But it's the constraints of that very relationship that give Billy Joel his subterranean fabulousity, and it's why he's unassumingly superior to all his mainstream seventies peers who got far more credit (James Taylor, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, etc.). Joel is the only rock star I've ever loved who I never wanted to be (not even when he was sleeping with Christie Brinkley)....
...What I'm saying is that there are no conditions for appreciating Billy Joel. I'm not sure loving an album like Glass Houses says anything about me (or about anyone). And in theory, this should make it a bad record, or--at best--a meaningless artifact. It should make liking Glass Houses akin to liking mashed potatoes or rainy afternoons. You can't characterize your self-image through its ten songs.
Now, I agree with Klosterman on his assessment on the lack of Billy Joel's coolness. The picture above is from Glass Houses. He is being so unironically cliche that it is completely un-fucking-cool. The furtherst away from cool as you could possibly get. Where I disagree with Klosterman is that this what makes him great, that his music is completely unrelated to his coolness factor. To me that will always inseparable from the relatively greatness of an artist. You cannot be a great musician without being cool, no matter how you go about getting that coolness factor (e.g. humor; irony; being self-consciously uncool; campiness; or just plain old sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll).
Somehow, Billy Joel has manufactured (I suspect, unintentionally) a completely benign personality. Sure, he's a drunk and often drives drunk, but he does so on Martha's Vineyard and that makes it completely innocuous because Martha's Vineyard is a completely imaginary place for me and for many Americans I suspect. If his music is coming from a completely benign place, a place that is virtually invisible, I have a hard time valuing it. Billy Joel is an artist of no consequence. While he is talented, in the end he doesn't matter. The world would not be one iota different if Billy Joel had never existed. That is why newer artists such as Alicia Keyes, John Legend, and Vanessa Carlton will usually leave Billy Joel out of their lists of influences and instead artists that aren't necessarily anymore talented than Billy Joel, such as Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, and Elton John, but do matter to Rock 'n' Roll, will always get the credit.
Regardless of all this, I would still like to answer Kevin's question as to who I do like in place of Billy Joel. Ultimately, I don't think I can in a way that would satisfy both me and Kevin, but I can make a better attempt than my last answer of Pearl Jam, STP, and Poison (God, that list is still completely and utterly embarrassing). My new answer to Kevin is Phil Collins. Am I completely happy with this answer? No. But it's the best I can come up with now, because Phil Collins does matter, at least more than Billy Joel does. And at the very , very least, if I was given the choice to play Glass Houses or No Jacket Required, it would be the latter every time.
P.S. Peter S. Scholtes wrote a very short piece defending Billy Joel. I don't think it's very convincing. I mean he argues for "Allentown" over "Pink Houses," which is ridiculous not because I think the Coug is better than Joel, but because the Coug is a complete abomination and really just an insult to Americans. I'm always afraid to make fun of people from other countries because I feel they can just mention the Coug and I would never be able to recover from that blow. Regardless I thought I should be fair and provide a reference to someone who does like Billy Joel.
