Unless I’m killing time in a piano bar, I’m no fan of Billy Joel. But the worst pop singer ever? I don’t see it. Lenny Kravitz is pretty awful. Michael Bolton? Is he pop? The Backstreet Boys? Boy George? How about dozens of defunct 80’s bands? Anyone remember John Waite?
Tell me that doesn’t suck worse than Billy Joel.
sounds like a guy having a hard time taking a dump.
Anything by William Shatner is just too scary.
I have to second that. 😉
Here’s the evidence:
Wow. Strong evidence
But I like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqXY3RUbBTg
OMG…Someone forced us all to watch Star Trek II (the movie) last night…I’m suffering from an overdose of shatner..
In honor of Ricardo Montalbahn, an excerpt from the greatest of all Star Trek movies:
We watched Burn After Reading. We had a better night 🙂
But seriously, don’t be letting Boo dis Alison Krauss, even if Waite is a tumble down from Robert Plant.
yeah, I love that song. Like a Rolling Stone reinterpreted by the intergalactic commander.
this too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GnoLJIIS4w
Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
a minute 1:14 is about as much as I can watch.
Like they say, you can’t separate the singer from the song, so it’s hard to judge the best/worst singer. I kind of like some of Billy Joel’s stuff when in the right mood.
Those I turn off the radio for range from Barry Manilow and Julie Andrews to Britney and Abba.
I’ll defend Billy Joel and Barry Manilow and Julie Andrews as fantastic performers until the day I die. I don’t care how un-PC that is. They can really deliver a song, whether critics understand that or not.
I like Billy Joel. I liked him better back when he was writing music but I still like to hear his old songs. I’m thinking of going to see him and Elton John when they are here in May. Of course it’s all nostalgia for me because it brings back my youth – I have a picture in my mind of where I was in life when each song came out. Sometimes of what I was exactly doing.
I’m surprised Barry Manilow didn’t make your list. We should have all gone to see Barry in Las Vegas. We could have flung things 🙂
The pop singers I have no interest in are the ones from the 90’s. Brittany etc. Although I find that I do like Christina Aguilera more these days.
There was a time in the 60’s when the piano player in my band wandered into a scummy bar in Hollywood and listened to this guy who was singing about “The Piano Man”……He loved it. No accounting for taste I guess.
Nice try, Booman. No way will I click on a link preceded by “This really sucks.” Reminds me of somebody taking something out of the fridge and saying “smell this.”
However, I’ll agree with you just based on the picture I can see (no idea who it is). That dress is so bad, I must avoid all music associated with it.
I think I do remember John Waite. This has to be worse. C’mon – the Backstreet Boys were so cute!
So were Milli Vanilli ..
To be fair, Rosenbaum isn’t just talking about bad singing; he’s talking about Billy Joel’s whole routine, including his material. The main complaint seems to be that it’s vacant.
I feel the same way about Madonna, who’s been virtually canonized as a genius.
Actually, not only wasn’t he talking about his singing, he wasn’t even talking about his music.
He doesn’t like his lyrics.
I think this is yet another example of the great divide between those who think of a song as the music and could care less about the words that are put to the music and those who think that words are key and the music is secondary (and the really annoying portion of that category: the people who recite lyrics without any hint of melody).
I fall into the first category. I like Billy Joel – I don’t care what he sings about, I like his melodies and I like how he and his bands play the music at the concerts (where, I should point out, you can’t understand the words half the time anyway).
Well, I never liked him for a different reason. He was a style-stealer and tagalong of remarkable durability. If he was great he would have had a style of his own (or kept ahead, which amounts to the same thing) rather than copping someone else’s. You knew a trend was dying when Billy Joel came up with a hit song aping that trend.
You leave Lenny Kravitz outta this!
:<)
Oh, no, Alison….say it ain’t so!
that Slate article is pretty sucky, that’s for sure. The writer doesn’t like Billy Joel, or his songs, or his singing. But then he starts criticizing as though it’s “art” when it isn’t it’s pop music. Fail.
among successful pop singers, Sheryl Crow is pretty bad (and I like her!) Listen to her live cd if you can stand to, she can’t find the pitch anywhere.
I agree about Billy Joel’s songs being whiny-ass and self-aggrandizing. Most pop lyrics are whiny-ass, self-absorbed, and express a juvenile point of view, however. Within that milieu, Joel’s lyrics don’t really stand out as abnormally so. It’s a matter of personal taste whether you like his music or not. I have never cared much for him, and I agree with the author of the article cited above that it is the sheer inauthenticity of Joel’s music, that is his signature and also probably his greatest strength. Joel takes ersatz music to a whole new level, because he is so sincerely inauthentic and constantly recreates and embellishes his phony persona with such passion and yes, talent. Billy Joel loves the fictitious tough, sincere “downtown man” that is Billy Joel, and that love always shines through.
i can’t get it to post because of something about a full screen, before you touch this link..have your air sickness bag available.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYb83KM4at4
Theodore Sturgeon once wrote that “94% of science fiction is crap . . . but then 94% of everything is crap.”
That goes for music. That goes for the music I like. That goes for the music you like.
What side of Sturgeon’s Line a particular song falls on depends on your tastes. There are few universally acclaimed geniuses and few consensus failures. There are even people who hate Ray Charles, and for all I know there could be people who like Jay And The Americans or William Shatner.
Pop by definition is something that is a compromise of things to appeal broadly. It doesn’t mean that pop has to be bad. Despite his recent criminal and moral indiscretions I think that Boy George’s catalog with Culture Club was actually pretty good in its own way. All this discussion makes me want to work out my own arrangement of “Do You Want To Hurt Me?”.
That would be “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?”
What? No mention of Mama Kicks?
Waite isn’t the worst, but his crap is greatly helped there by Allison Krause
Now I’m going to pick up some Alison Krauss, which was long overdue (right after some Etta James).
At Last: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fSY_S45rZ4