Your Secret Shame: Billy Joel album ownership poll

Between the ages of seven and 14, I bought The Stranger (first record I ever wanted), 52nd Street, and Turnstiles. I also made a cassette recording from a videotape of Billy Joel: Live from Long Island, but I'm not sure that counts.

4

4, also

I kind of wish I owned a best of.

nylon curtain rools

When I was 12 I called the Oldies station every day after school asking for them to play "Piano Man," and 3/4 of the time they wouldn't. They got really sick of me.

Fuck secret shame. Glass Houses has some regular rotation shit.

7 albums + mp3s of the late 80s singles.

No shame whatsoever. I just put "Sleeping With the Television On" on a mix CD this weekend.

I mean, dude was a Long Island Bowie when it came to "character"/concept albums there for awhile.

I own(ed) a cassingle of "We Didn't Start the Fire." That is all.

Off the top of my head I think I own nine. Don't mind a one of them, although I don't put The Nylon Curtain on as often as I might. Great tunes on every one.

Latest discovery: "Miami 2017" - kickin' some ass, Billy!

i currently own zero, but that's because i never got around to replacing my departed vinyl stranger and glass houses with cds. i am still fond of both of those, though.

When I was 12 I called the Oldies station every day after school asking for them to play "Piano Man," and 3/4 of the time they wouldn't. They got really sick of me.

missed the pun the first round...

I have a couple of his singles recorded to VHS from when I was a teen, and thought songs like "We didnt start the fire" were kind of ok, but then again I liked Phil Collins back then too so wtf.

I own 0 of his albums and dont really care for him. Stuff like "Big Shot" and "Pressure" (is that the name?) arent too bad though I guess.

It turns out I have these:

Cold Spring Harbor
Turnstiles
The Stranger
52nd Street
Glass Houses
Songs In The Attic
The Nylon Curtain
An Innocent Man
Greatest Hits I & II

...and the best thing is, I probably paid around a dollar each for the whole lot. I absolutely grew up on Greatest Hits I & II - along with Graceland and Traveling Wilburys Vol. I it pretty much defined my listening habits until the age of 14 or so. This guy was really great.

I once subscribed to the Root Beer Rag.

Chuck Klostermann tries to muster some apologetic defense of Joel in Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs but it all revolves around trying to prove that the Piano Man is way more emo than he gets credit for, the songs are all about the loneliness of the human soul maaan and stuff. I dunno, that's sort of right, but Billy Joel is also the most unapologetic asshole in his lyrics, nobody but maybe Daryl Hall is ever quite as mean and yet unafraid of being grandiose. Klostermann is right that Billy Joel isn't cool - he just can't do detached irony or anything like that. It's pop-ism but with a kind of nasty, unpleasant grimace a lot of the time. Fucking great tunes.

You should never argue with a crazy mi mi mi mi mi mi mind

i used to have an innocent man and the nylon curtain -- hey, i was 14 and they were both very popular then! plus, still kinda like "uptown girl" and "allentown"!

Klostermann is right that Billy Joel isn't cool - he just can't do detached irony or anything like that. It's pop-ism but with a kind of nasty, unpleasant grimace a lot of the time.

also, more proof that Billy Joel is the American Elvis Costello o_0

TS: "allentown" vs. "shipbuilding"

Zero albums but I really like "Uptown Girl".

I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floor of silent seas.

My sister and I used to listen to "River of Dreams" everyday, right after school.

Admit it - this is a fucking PARTY!

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/m7kUZGNzgZs&hl=en&fs=1";></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/m7kUZGNzgZs&hl=en&fs=1"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

and this is even MORE of a party!

<img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514081Q5Y3L._SL500_AA240_.jpg<;/img>

<img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514081Q5Y3L._SL500_AA240_.jpg";</img>

Our secret shame: we're not so good at the formatting. d'oh!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514081Q5Y3L._SL500_AA240_.jpg%22

If the Stylus archives were up today, I'd post one of our finest pieces of writing: a re-examination of The Stranger

I dunno, that's sort of right, but Billy Joel is also the most unapologetic asshole in his lyrics, nobody but maybe Daryl Hall is ever quite as mean and yet unafraid of being grandiose.

...and Daryl Hall gets away with it b/c he can sing, and Joel can't.

Zero :(

I'm gonna buy some, then the cool kids will think I'm cool.

I used to listen the hell out of The Stranger when I was a kid, and still have my dad's copy of that, Glass Houses, and 52nd Street on vinyl. I also grabbed the 3 disc best of collection from the shared MP3 drive at work a couple of years ago. The first two made it onto the new ipod two weeks ago, just in case.

Billy Joel = ugly but great.

do you get bonus points for owning this:

http://www.audiophileusa.com/covers400water/42492.jpg

or a hassles record:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/6/74935670_d4851893ce.jpg?v=0

and just in case you've never heard an attila song:

I own ZERO billy joel albums but I did see him in concert -- opening for Robin Trower in 1974 at Northern Kentucky State College. rockin' dude.

I put the Glass Houses album on my iPod a few weeks ago. "Don't Ask Me Why"

Why Billy Joel Is So Great, Part I

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=X163bAYcD1M

New angle: Billy Joel = John + Paul.

Why Billy Joel Is So Great, Part II

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=m2bPu6dW5H4

scott seward - thanks so much for linking that! I've tried before, in pre-You-Tube days, to track down Attila with no luck. I always imagined it would sound like a completely amateurish joke of a band, but, I mean, that keyboard sound is pretty fantastic!

Attila kinda sounds like Deep Purple -- also, i also kinda like "don't ask me why," so make it three Billy Joel songs that meet my approval.

Zero albums but I really like "Uptown Girl".

― Vision, Saturday, September 27, 2008 10:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I don't own any and would stab if I saw him but the wife refuses to part with her 2-CD collection so I dunno how to vote here

You can pay Uncle Sam with the overtime.

Two. The Stranger, and Glass Houses.

And apparently, if you get enough beer inside of me and Eazy, we can both sing The Stranger pretty much front to back. Even the fast part of "Italian Restaurant".

Zero, but I'm not opposed to him on principle.

Yeah, that's me pretty much, too.

There's a new remastered versionof The Stranger out there, with a bonus disc of a live Carnegie Hall show recorded a few weeks before its release.

"Vienna" is his best.

Greatest Hits Vol's I & II ('73-'85) is nothing to sneeze at. I haven't owned it in years, but it was a constant when i was a kid. it would be damn near perfect (i mean, if you go in for that kind of thing) if they had replaced the lame stuff from An Innocent Man with like "she's got a way" or something.

I like most of the singles from An Innocent Man (which account for most of the album, no?); and have a soft spot for the daft "You're Only Human (Second Wind)."

i once had that album with All For Leyna, but i got rid of it.

you're only human i seem to remember liking (single from the comp, right?) uptown girl, longest time & tell her about it just seemed inescapable (lol when i was 7). i distinctly remember fast-forwarding over those.

also my parents seemed to like him. it would have been a cold day in hell before they would have let me rock VH 1984 in the Cutlass Cruiser cassette deck

I voted for "2" because I have Glass Houses (on vinyl, with no way of playing it) and a live CD I bought for the wife that she didn't want. But then reading the other responses I realized that somewhere in boxes I have vinyl copies of Innocent Man and Nylon Curtain too, so change one "2" to "4" in the final results.

I would completely play Glass Houses right now if I had the means, shamelessly and with a certain pride. The others, no, I think. I have a soft spot, so soft it's really almost a rotten spot, for "Close To The Borderline."

Two. The Stranger, and Glass Houses.

And apparently, if you get enough beer inside of me and Eazy, we can both sing The Stranger pretty much front to back. Even the fast part of "Italian Restaurant".

C'mon, even "Everybody Has A Dream"?

Yes, well. No, not that one. "Pretty much," I said. And I guess "The Stranger" is pretty spotty after the first verse.

Anyway, I get drunk and do the same thing too.

Hey, man. Don't go changin'.

Damnit, Pleasant Plains! I'm so jealous of you and all these other people with their cool-ass screen names! ARRGH!! NU-ILX what are you doin' to a poor Bimble??? Ah, I dunno, but whoever put the screen name feature back into ILX is seeing some real talent displayed here as a result, and I salute you.

C'mon, even "Everybody Has A Dream"?

Last week I was bored and at Borders and read an interview with B. Joel in the current issue of American Songwriter or Performing Songwriter or Performing American Songwriter, and he trashed "Everybody Has A Dream", saying that he wrote and recorded it right at the end of The Stranger session, feeling like the record needed a button at the end.

I heard "Movin' Out" in the background somewhere last week and was struck how specific and good those lyrics are, though the bridge/finale is a "Layla" homage/ripoff.

Billy Joel Sound Effects:

Motorcycle Revving
Rock Thrown Through Window
Number Being Dialed on Touch-tone Phone
The National Anthem
Helicopters
Steel Factory

What else am I missing?

zero but i own the attila album, so negative one really.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Results proving once more that ILE is a microcosm, and a true mirror of the universe.

Well I guess I get to continue the crusade.

I would shoot Billy Joel on sight and mutilate the body. 3
I would shoot Billy Joel on sight. 2

Leave a tender moment alone

I at some point had his greatest hits on cassette but that's as far as I went. I did, however, hear "Stiletto" on the radio a couple of days ago. I'd never heard it before but immediately had to look up who had sampled it, because I knew someone must have. And indeed, De La Soul, Kool G. Rap, El-P, Nas ...

Lol, stiletto is a new one for me. This guy’s a genius at world-building. Everything exists in a pianoverse inspired by the true stories told by sad men at hotel bars

Is there a good box set of singles? Where should I dive into the repertoire?

I might have had the Lion King soundtrack tape

Wish we'd had you for the listening thread!

A good hits comp basically works as a singles box set with Joel, because his b-sides were almost always album tracks (sometimes from previous albums!) and the exceptions are completely forgettable obscurities that reveal little about him. The compilation "Greatest Hits 1 & 2" is the canonical object; "The Essential Billy Joel" is more complete, and chronological, as a singles collection, though it drops one or two fan/airplay favorites like Scenes From An Italian Restaurant.

The best albums are The Stranger and 52nd Street (slick 70s pop), Glass Houses (new wave exercises), and An Innocent Man (50s genre exercises). All the others except The Bridge are at least 50% pretty good, but inevitably, we found, there's some filler and dross, especially on the first couple and the last couple.

IT'S BETTER THAN DRINKIN' ALONE: The Official ILM Track-by-Track BILLY JOEL Listening Thread

Well, we also liked River of Dreams quite a bit and to our immense surprise

yeah, it's better than expected - tho, not where anyone should start, i don't think?

I don't see why not.

My first Dylan album was Oh Mercy.

fair enough! (Desire, for me, so yeah.)

I also made a cassette recording from a videotape of Billy Joel: Live from Long Island, but I'm not sure that counts

I might be 12 years too late, Eazy, but boy, does that count for something.