Billy Joel: The Greatest Solo Artist of All Time Vol. 2

VOLUME II: Blowing Up the Bridge to Let the River Flow

To dissect the genius of Billy Joel, I have often felt the best place to start is to closely look at his final three albums. Starting with the record where, almost all critics agree, he started to suck ("The Bridge") and ending up at "River of Dreams", a huge commercial and critical (at least Grammy-wise) success. 

And of course sandwiched by these two records is the "We Didn't Start the Fire" vehicle, "Storm Front". For some reason music journalists usually disregard all three of these records, im my opinion because "The Bridge" was such a disaster.

But there is a common thread in these album that I have struggled to comprehend all my life. Their titles seem to imply a connection to water, but really only "Storm Front" seems to have water songs and there are only two of them (and those are really about fishing anyway). 

Sonically, however, these records do share a number of similiraties; as they usher in the Modern Joel era. Just from a musical standpoint, these records seem to include a specific group of "stereotype" songs. For instance: The Fake Soul Song ("A Matter of Trust", "No Man's Land", etc.), The Wacky Pop Number ("Running On Ice", "Modern Woman", "We Didn't Start the Fire", "The River of Dreams"), The Shitty Prom Anthem("This is the Time"), The Beatles-esque Try ("Leningrad", "The Great Wall of China"), The Poignant Ballad ("And So It Goes", "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)") and finally, The Mid-Tempo Rocker (pretty much everything else).

Billy Joel has almost never strayed from the idea that EVERY album should have either 9 or 10 songs on it ("Turnstiles" only has 8). This is not only kind of weird but also very restrictive in a creative sense. But I would never question BJ's logic as to doing this, he is obviously wiser than me. I don't hate "The Bridge" as a whole really; it has it's moments.