Billy Joel Can Suck It

I'd like to personally thank Ron Rosenbaum for starting a dialog that is long overdue:

It is a kind of mystery: Why does his music make my skin crawl in a way that other bad music doesn't? Why is it that so many of us feel it is possible to say Billy Joel is—well—just bad, a blight upon pop music, a plague upon the airwaves more contagious than West Nile virus, a dire threat to the peacefulness of any given elevator ride, not rock 'n' roll but schlock 'n' roll?

Oh, and it only gets better.

MORE: I was going to bring this up earlier and decided to just let it slide, but since LGM brought it up I may as well add to the discussion:

Ron Rosenbaum inexplicably fails to include the song that is arguably BJ's five-minute shite-load, "We Didn't Start the Fire."

[...]

But I think the song's essential malignance is summed up by one line: "JFK, blown away -- what else do I have to say?" Because, of course, nothing is quite as historically self-explanatory as the fucking Kennedy assassination.

I'd like to posit that "We Didn't Start the Fire" is, despite the flaws mentioned above, in addition to the small detail that it is essentially a novelty song, in fact, the best that Billy Joel has to offer.

That is how much I personally loathe the Billy Joel oeuvre, particularly "Piano Man," which, when song by drunk 20-somethings during happy hour, makes me want to eat shattered glass almost as much as when I hear just Billy Joel sing the damn song by himself.

And don't get me started on "Big Shot" ...