#45

The truth is that Joel was born at the wrong time. Were he a decade older, he might have wound up in the Brill Building crafting perfect little pop songs and gone down in history with Burt Bacharach, Carole King, and company. But Joel came of age in the post-Beatles era, when songwriters grew self-conscious about rock's aesthetic and social significance, and felt compelled to make statements. Alas, Joel is a leaden lyricist with nothing to say; the result is songs like the 1989 hit "We Didn't Start the Fire," a laundry list of historical events—"Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge on the River Kwai"—that Joel tried to pass off as a panorama of postwar American life, or a portrait of baby boomer ennui, or something. Joel's self-seriousness has been painfully evident on his recent co-headlining tours with Elton John, who never lets artistic pretension stop him from donning a feather boa and throwing a party. Which Lite FM legend would you rather have over to dinner?

Billy Joel: Oh, the squandered genius!