Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, in which writers share a poem or a paragraph that all of us should commit to heart. This week, Eli Lake explains why Billy Joel belongs in the pantheon of the greats.
Rock music is a fickle thing. There are some artists who will be forever cool like Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, or Nirvana. And then there are the unapologetic sellouts, the stars that sold a stew of pabulum and clichés to millions of eager sheep. The Eagles or Electric Light Orchestra come to mind. These are the frauds whose insipid compositions inspired a new generation of punk rockers to burn down all that came before them.
At the top of this list of mock stars is Billy Joel. Or so the critics claim. There is no denying his success. He has sold more than 160 million records. He has been honored by the Kennedy Center. He is enshrined in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Until he came down with a rare brain disorder, announced this year, he had a residency at Madison Square Garden. But the arbiters of authenticity nonetheless dismiss and deride him.
“At a certain point, consistent, aggressive badness justifies profound hostility,” wrote his fellow Long Islander, Ron Rosenbaum, in 2009, in one of the most scathing reviews I’ve ever read. “They hate you just the way you are.” For critics like Rosenbaum, Joel is a clever mimic, inhabiting the styles of greater artists to make middlebrow slop, an entertainer pretending to be an artist, a Neil Diamond who thought he was Neil Young.
The bard from Hicksville, Long Island, hated the critics who looked down their noses at him. He used to rip up their reviews onstage and encourage his adoring fans to boo them. And after more than 50 years of taking their slings and arrows Joel has achieved his revenge in a two-part HBO documentary that aired on July 18 and July 25. And So It Goes, named after one of the deep cuts from his 1989 Storm Front album, is littered with interviews from a slew of recording artists universally acknowledged as rock’s gods. And whaddya know, all of them can’t shower enough praise on Billy Joel.
