yitbos
Posted on 01/24/2009 9:21:17 PM PST by SeekAndFind
This may seem an odd moment to bring up the subject of Billy Joel. But the recent death of the painter Andrew Wyeth revived a long-standing debate over whether his art is respectable or merely sentimental schlock. (Say it: good or bad?) It got me to thinking about the question of value in art and whether there are any absolute standards for judging it. It indicates the question is still alive, not relegated to irrelevance by relativism.
And then I picked up The Art Instinct, a new book by Denis Dutton, the curator of the Arts & Letters Daily Web site. The book strives valiantly to find a basis for judging the value of art from the perspective of evolutionary psychology; in it, Dutton argues that a certain kind of artistic talent offered a competitive advantage in the Darwinian struggle for survival.
Which brings me to Billy Joel—the Andrew Wyeth of contemporary pop music—and the continuing irritation I feel whenever I hear his tunes, whether in the original or in the multitude of elevator-Muzak versions. 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?
I'm reluctant to pick on Billy Joel. He's been subject to withering contempt from hipster types for so long that it no longer seems worth the time. Still, the mystery persists: How can he be so bad and yet so popular for so long? He's still there.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Well said. Many of them believe in Utopian societies where everyone has a home, health care, goes to college, etc.
They are just naive and forget the dreaded “free rider problem.”
If its free, nobody tries anymore.
Basic law of human nature. That is why Marxists have to use force.
Only to people who have never heard Woody Guthrie
Billy Joel has done some good work. Not all of his songs are masterpieces, but he has real talent.
Danielle Steel sold more books than Shakespeare, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, and all writers, who ever lived in San Francisco where she lives, combined!
I agree, I was going to post the same thing.
I think you're confusing Billy Joel with Paul McCartney. ;-)
They “mean well”.
Like they say, if you are not a liberal when you are 20 you have no heart.
If you are not a conservative by the time you are 40 you have no brain.
What has Billy Joel ever said about politics?
Shrug. The Robert Goulet of the 70s generation.
BINGO! Billy Joel does a fine job in his genre. The real problem is people who take pop music seriously. Hey, people, it's just ear candy.
I do love Piano Man. Can take or leave the rest.
To borrow a phrase from that great poet and philosopher William Joel:
“You may be wrong,
But for all I know,
You may be right.”
He never said he was a victim of circumstance. He still belongs. Don’t get him wrong. Go ahead with your own life, leave him alone.
yitbos
I just thought that while I was in this “New York State of Mind” I would crack open a bottle of red, or a bottle of white.
I am no fan of Billy Joel or gay pop music, but alone, in the privacy of my car, if I hear Billy Joel’s ‘She’s Got A Way’ or ‘For the Longest Time’, I will sing along because those are, I think, to my eternal shame, good pop songs.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.