Critics Hate Billy Joel, Just the Way He Is

By PopEater Staff Posted Jan 26th 2009 10:48AM

(Jan. 26) - Snobby critics have a way about them when it comes to Billy Joel. A sizable chunk obviously get their jollies by ripping the 'Piano Man' apart as a devastatingly uncool poseur whose radio-ready musical output is more shlock than rock.

Sure, some of his tunes can be a bit heavy-handed ('We Didn't Start a Fire') or cheesy ('Uptown Girl') or unintentionally sappy ('She's Always a Woman'), but does that make the New York native the "worst pop singer ever"? Slate, the online magazine, obviously thinks so. Or rather, two of their culture writers do. In 2005, Jody Rosen argued the "essence of [Joel's] badness lies in his squandered excellence," meaning that the rocker has the tools to be great, but his supposed transparent desire to be "an artiste" has sunk his credibility with serious observers.

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Rock snobs have had it out for Billy for decades, but he's been known to fight back.

Now the site has unleashed Ron Rosenbaum, author of other various "worst" profiles, to unleash his poisoned quill upon Joel, and it ain't pretty.

Rosenbaum asks himself why so many of his fellow critics believe Joel is such a "blight upon pop music" ... "a plague upon the airwaves more contagious than West Nile virus" ... and "a dire threat to the peacefulness of any given elevator ride" or even why Joel himself thinks people don't like him.

"It's not that they dislike anything exterior about you. They dislike you because of who you really are inside. They dislike you for being you. At a certain point, consistent, aggressive badness justifies profound hostility. They hate you just the way you are."

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Rosenbaum zeroes in on why he thinks Joel is so "loathsome," namely his "self-righteous contempt for others" as heard in so many of his more famous songs. "Most frequently a contempt for the supposed phoniness or in-authenticity of other people as opposed to the rock-solid authenticity of our B.J."

He Cites a Few Examples:

'Piano Man': You can hear Joel's contempt, both for the losers at the bar he's left behind in his stellar schlock stardom and for the "entertainer-loser"(the proto-B.J.) who plays for them. Even the self-contempt he imputes to the "piano man" rings false.

'Only the Good Die Young': Contempt for the Catholic religion. I know: It's spirited if anti-spiritual, but, still ... I've heard some Catholic girls opine on its most famous line ("Catholic girls start much too late"), and they ain't buyin' it. B.J. is no James Joyce.

'New York State of Mind': [Joel displays] his oh-so-rebellious contempt for "the movie stars in their fancy cars and their limousines." You think Billy Joel has really never ridden in a limo?

'The Entertainer': Entertainers are phonies! Except exquisitely self-aware entertainers like B.J., who let you in on this secret.

He also lashes out at Joel for his "man of the people" songs, like 'Allentown' and 'The Downeaster.' "The strain of his pretension is just too much to bear."

Rosenbaum had better watch himself. Last year, after a critic for the New Zealand Sunday Times-Star slammed the singer following a "back-slapping" conversation that had appeared cordial, Joel wrote back:

"I had no idea when you interviewed me that you considered much of my later work to be 'sentimental rubbish', or that you thought songs like 'Uptown Girl' and 'We Didn't Start the Fire' were 'abominations'. And your back-slapping, buddy-buddy style of conversation betrayed no indication that you actually compared talking with me to 'sleeping with an inflatable girlfriend'."

Find out about Billy Joel's settlement with his old drummer >>>

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