I respect Billy Joel but I don’t understand the appeal. Much like Springsteen, he is a man of a specific locale—Long Island instead of the Jersey turnpike, if I recall correctly—and a generous tipper at hole-in-the-wall restaurants. In my mind, he is all piano balladry instead of good old rock-and-roll, notwithstanding his big torch song that everyone does at karaoke. Other than these basic facts and that one song, I won’t presume to understand anything about his career or background. I had only encountered the idea of him, never listened to a full record of his music.
Apparently this one… well, it’s not a good one to start with.
Mr. Joel remembers the album, in retrospect, as a collection of material that was not ready for release, played by musicians he was not in sync with. He gave up on being invested in the work, which is essentially how I felt toward the end. It is quite ironic, given this statement, that one of the interstitial lyrics in the last song “Getting Closer” goes like: “And if I could go back/and start over somehow/I would not change that much/Knowing what I know now”. It seems like a lot of this music is worth changing, honing, adapting.
What does this sound like? For the most part, it sounds like big drums and string synths, the timbres of the ‘80’s. There are occasionally some good breakdowns in the middle of songs that wouldn’t be out of place on a Yes record, oddly enough. Take “Code of Silence,” for example, where there’s about fifteen seconds of Hammond organ and guitar that come out of nowhere before going into the strange wordless ululations of a female vocalist blended with some harmonica work.
There are two big features on this album, which one might think of as the two different sides of the titular bridge. Ray Charles represents the old ways: the hepcats, piano, hard-living barroom blues players and hired guns for studio sessions. Cyndi Lauper represents a new wave of New Wave: club kids, synthesizers, collaborators chosen with MTV-era celebrity in mind, and the big pop machine shining its universal spotlight on you. Billy Joel is caught between the two, and it does him a disservice; I won’t cross this bridge again.
Verdict: Set it Free
Any recommendations for a better Billy Joel record?