This Okay is so badass 😛

I don’t understand, explain ?

@@connor3mm597 getting older is natural and the only way to stop it as we know it is to die. That's the alternative.

@@egett yeah that’s fair

Dying young is over rated and a parents heartache for the rest of they're lives imho

You bet! His voice never changed. 😊

@@faithcurrent658 River of Dreams was a major seller. Grunge had started to ascend at this point, however.

He said something in an interview I like: He said he doesn't particularly like writing, but he is happy to have written.

I think the main pattern is he stays healthy and without that damn pressure of putting out sth for us. I wish him a content and long life filled with happy moments every day. I enjoy his old songs as much as they're new cause he sings them always slightly different. Thanks for performing your original songs live for us, sir.

He said as a composer. He's still writing music.

It's his choice, but it's also frustrating, as a fan, knowing he'll never release a new album with new material. I am still hungry for a new Billy Joel album, but lately, he's only releasing live albums or material from his vaults.

he's forgiven himself for not being Beethoven (he said so himself)

you don't know what "composer" means, do you......sad

yeah what a joke that comment turned out to be, but anyone with an ounce of sense knew it at the time too. we all hoped there was more to come, but there's been so little and hardly better than what came before (granted a tall order). as a closet composer, even I am amazed that someone so talented at what he does could suddenly stop, even though I can appreciate how hard/stressful it can be go to through the whole recording/producing/etc process. slow down, sure, but stop? how can he not have about 1000 songs (many of them truly great or at the very least "recordable-worthy") just screaming to be made after all this time? I shudder to think of those gems that we will never know.

genetic what? its called practice and study, oh and passion most importantly

improviser. To break it to you, but on behalf of EVERY musician and scientist, music has NO origin in your Gene's. Only practice, motivation and practice. The only way biology could have an impact is if it affected those factors.

@@kevinzhang3313 No, I don't think so. Yes, many people can play perfectly without any mistake by practising hard every day. But NOT everybody can compose or sing well.

@PDN I bet his mom's a very good singer.

@@kevinzhang3313 I agree with you.

He has a sister too.

@@petep286 Technically, his sister is his cousin. His mother took her in and adopted her after her sister died.

Beethoven, Symphony 6, 1st movement

Famous last words....Stick around for 2024.

hahaha

First piece was chopin polonaise op 40 no 1 and the second was beethoven 6th symphony 1st movement i believe, there was no mozart

His best stuff is yet to come.....as a composer, therefore writing music. His last studio album "Fantasies & Delusions" were purely classical compositions (no vocal), and that came out in 2001. But yeah, it has been a while since he put out anything. Its been 16 years, and I doubt he will put out another rock&roll/pop album. Fingers crossed though lol. But as a composer, he might put out another album filled with compositions/scores, which he always wanted to do in the first place. He never intended to be singer.

He's not really an artist then. He once said a real artist can't help but create, that they create to the exclusion of everything else. Yet he stopped creating when he was barely middle aged, plus he said he hated writing songs. So to me what he is now is like Paul McCartney - A guy playing in a copy band, a copy band that gets paid a lot of money to play songs that are 30, 40 even 50 years old. Am I right? Both of them are not playing as current creative artists, they are playing songs that were created by them when they were completely different people with completely different lives that have zero relevancy to who they are today. When Bill Joel plays "Piano man" he's the furthest thing from that young struggling musician playing in a bar, it has ZERO relevance to who he is today other than making pretend he is that guy. That's why I will never pay to see him or McCartney in concert, it's just way too pathetic too me. It's two guys doing nothing but shoveling up money while they play make pretend. They got all the time and money in the world, yet they could put out albums when they didn't have the time and money and now they can't? It's laziness. Nothing will ever beat seeing a musician live who has a new album out, nothing. That's when real communication happens.

I understand where you're coming from. Sure, I can agree that its a form of laziness. But who knows, he may be writing everyday, just not revealing it to the public/record companies. When Billy was on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert", he said "I thought I had my say". In another interview he mentioned something about not wanting to put out another record and it being terrible (something along those lines). Like "Dumb and Dumber" and "Dumb and Dumber To". The sequel to "Dumb and Dumber" was horrible and that is how I think Billy would approach making a new album/song. He just does't want to do it. But I will have to disagree with him not being a "real artist". He definitely is. If he can still sing, play piano, play harmonica, play guitar, play accordion, and compose classical pieces and songs, then he most certainly is a real artist. Just because he keeps "possible" new material to himself doesn't acquit him from being a real artist.

Georgie Thumbs you sound way too pretentious. Calling them pathetic for playing songs they wrote? if it is important to you that they play new stuff it's alright, but a lot of people don't really care if a song is "relevant" to who the artist is nowadays. Most people just love Piano Man and want to see this man play it live, they don't care if Billy Joel is a struggling piano player or not, they just love songs and want to see them live and that's it. It's not "make pretend", it's playing your work to people who are interested, and as long as he's able to do that, he clearly is still an artist. Besides, when they do put out new stuff, there will always be a lot of people who won't like the new stuff and will attend their shows purely for the old stuff, as much as they'd like to hear new stuff that they like, they'd never say no for a good performance of the old stuff, which is what they end up getting when they go to a concert, and they still get "real comunication" because they still love that stuff.

I simply DO NOT GET how an artist decides on, say a Wednesday, that "today, this song is the last one I will ever write". How do you shut off creativity? Yes yes yes, I know about his classical stuff--but the inspiration to create doesn't just "go away". If a lyric pops into his head at three a.m., does he simply say "fuck it" and he pops an Ambien to get back to sleep? I'll never understand that.

Andrew Pestotnik sure there are, the majority of the piano majors at a conservatory are better piano players than Billy but classical piano is an exacting art where pop and rock is a feeling and the piano isn't nearly as difficult not even close.

I wouldn't say that classically trained pianists are automatically superior to pop or jazz pianists. While from a technical aspect they may be better so that they can play music such as piano concertos etc, I agree with that. Playing like Zimermann or Rubenstein or whomever is very very challenging and tough. But being good pop or jazz pianist you must be good at improvising and at creating sound. That thing can be quite challanging at first. I myself have been trained to become classical pianist, but when I switched to jazz and pop I had troubles at the beginning because of how to play certain melodies in a "jazzy and swinging" way. What do you think?

Andreas Hoppe​ have you played any of Billy's songs? With the possible exception of Root Beer Rag all of the other pieces in his catalog would be fairly easy for a classically trained pianist to play. Billy does far less improvising than Elton John or Bruce Hornsby. Granted jazz improvisation takes considerable understanding in music theory, scales, and tritone substitutions, as well as developing a swing feel. There's a HUGE difference between playing like Billy Joel and Oscar Peterson lol.

Andrew Pestotnik Billy knows what he's talking about but as a songwriter he's unbeatable.

I can name a few but not very many, there’s Jerry Lee Lewis, Elton John, and George Michael. I think that’s it.