Billy Joel - River of Dreams

God fucking damnit do I hate Billy Joel.

            To me, he is generic music incarnate. He is the Coldplay of his generation. His music is easy listening ubiqitouosness writ large. It just makes it worse that I really enjoy many of his singles, because when I get into an argument with one of his numerous Jewish Suburbanite fans they inevitably say “really? You hate ‘We didn’t Start The Fire?’” “Well no, I just think it’s a bit overplayed.” “Well it isn’t His fault people like his music. What about Piano Man?” “Well I think that’s a very pretty song actually.” “So why do you hate Billy Joel?”

EVERY. FUCKING. OTHER. SONG.

I mean, that’s not fair either, but being an actual fan of Billy Joes is like stating a preference for Wonder Bread while walking through an artisanal bakery. His music is the ever present soundtrack of department store mediocrity in the 1980s. And he was bland 1980s before it was cool.

His early stuff from the 70s? Bland 1980s music. This album, “River of Dreams,” © 1993? Bland 1980s music. I’m not sure how one could crank out this stuff post-Nirvana but hey, why change. I keep buying his albums hoping that I’ll find what people are so gaga over, but it continues to evade me. He has some really competent singles, some I even really like. “Downeaster Alexa” gets huge points in my book for being an enjoyable song about a boring topic, not that writing about dying industries in the 1980s was an edgy or unique move.

The one thing I can say for him is that Billy Joel is a very talented musician who is very good at using pop hooks to further effective storytelling. This is indeed worthy of respect, and many of his songs are even well constructed. For what it is worth he seems like a nice guy. But this album is ass.

The first two songs are actually decent, but the entire rest of the album is trash. The third song, “Blonde Over Blue,” sounds like a nursery rhyme had unprotected sex with a Supremes song at a Styx concert. Lest you think I am talking influences, I mean I am pretty sure he lifted the hook from “Mr. Roboto” and a Supremes song and inserted it into a nursery rhyme. “A Minor Variation” is a sad attempt to pick up where fucking Huey Lewis left off, “Shades of Grey” has some interesting moments which one gets the impression were lifted from a Queen song. “All about Soul” is exceptionally earnest in a super generic way. “Lullabye” fucking sucks. “Two Thousand Years” seems to go on at least that long, and I can say unequivocally that “Famous Last Words” “blows.”

When lost in the Billy Joel desert I usually find solace in the singles, in this case “The River of Dreams.” I remember liking this as a child, but fuck dude. This song is so fucking insulting. Warmed over theology set in this poorly ripped off gospel setting. It’s like his manager said “Billy, we need a knock out single. Rewrite the Lord ’s Prayer so it sounds more urban and call it a day. Be sure to rip off The Tokens.”

So what happened here? This album is a disaster. There are a lot of things that can contribute to a musical miscarriage such as this. The artist could be at a bad part of their career, the production team could have done a bad job, or the artist could blow. The first of these options is definitely a plausible hypothesis here. Billy Joel had a very long career and this album was the very end of it. As the album was being written his marriage was disintegrating and he had just discovered that his long-time manager and brother-in-law had been embezzling millions of dollars and covering it up with shoddy accounting. His last pop album, critics consider it exceptionally dark, tied up in themes of weariness and betrayal. After this album he retired from pop music and devoted his energy to classical piano compositions.

What is insane is that everyone ate this up. Critics loved it and his fans bought so many copies that the thing debuted at number 1 and stayed there for…for fucking ever. When listening to this I get the feeling he had, for whatever reason, to finish up some kind of contractual obligation, but his fans still fawn over “The River of Dreams” as if it were something other than nearly blatant plagiarism. I get the feeling he had reached the point in his career where his fans would go orgasmic over anything he produced, and he knew it. I really think he put this out so he could get out on a high note and return to serious music.

But really there isn’t much in this album that is uncharacteristic of Billy Joel. I find it kind of funny that critics found this album to be dark, considering the cloyingly sweet production values and skull cracking constant major keys. It continues to be appalling to me that the decade that produced Husker Du and Devo could consider Billy Joel trendy or unique; that critics were calling Billy Joel’s album “dark” 14 days after the Smashing Pumpkins released “Siamese Dream” kind of boggles the mind. The production here is irritatingly glossy, but that was classic 1980s pop and, thus, completely par for the course for Billy Joel. More worrying is the by the numbers genre-hopping and democratic party liberalism in the song writing. There’s several maudlin songs to his daughter, there’s songs about how war is bad but he sympathizes with those involved, there’s songs about how traditional enemies aren’t that bad. He pulls in elements of funk, soul, glam, afro-beat, and electro. Normally I would think this genre hopping and liberalism was something to be admired but he doesn’t suggest any solutions for the world’s problems and despite musically name dropping the genres he doesn’t absorb them.

Go listen to “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” by The Clash. They are obviously still The Clash and retain their punky sound, but they so clearly inhabit the ska influence in the music that the one song changes the sound of the whole album. Billy Joel can have as many fucking gospel backup singers as he likes, his music still sounds like Billy Fucking Joel. Its still this bland, major key pop music replete with hooks and no substance. He is adapting his style somewhat to the genre but he takes no risk, doesn’t drive his song writing to inhabit the new space. He’s changing his genre along with his overcoats. I wonder if his managers thought it was funny, selling rebellion for money?

Sorry, got a little carried away there.

I am, of course, not the first to notice that, no matter the genre he was assaulting, Billy Joel still sounds like Billy Joel. That award goes to the great satirist of our time, Weird Al Yankovic, whose song “Still Billy Joel To Me,” is, while very lighthearted and funny, one of the most savage satires of a respected artist I have listened to. That Weird Al got away with it in the time of slavering Billy Joel fans says much for his jovial, harmless persona, as well as his relative anonymity at the time.

I am almost done with my third fucking page on this shitstorm of an album, and I want to let you finish, Taylor, but I have one more point to make. In the grand tradition of psychological thrillers and horror movies everywhere, I must leave you with this question: Is Billy Joel generic because he aped 80s pop clichés, or did he create 80s pop clichés?

I really don’t have an answer for you, and It may not matter, but think about this for a second. He was played to death or an entire decade. He managed to hop on every lame political musical bandwagon, and rip off, impersonate, or pay tribute to every fad to be flung forth, viscous and wriggling, from the 1980’s gaping urethra. In the process, he folded a broad ribbon of bland mediocrity into the chocolate mouse of an entire decade. I’m not sure if this makes a difference in how I view him, since it is clear that he did not pioneer any of the causes or genres that he championed, but I don’t need my artists to be on the bleeding edge, I just want them to have authenticity. Is it possible that, at one time, he had authenticity, and the over-play made the authenticity sound like cliché?

I don’t know. But fuck this album.