Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II

We Say...

Review by Michaelangelo Matos

Billy Joel presents a conundrum for serious pop lovers. On the one hand, how can anyone deny the man's gifts? He writes melodies that stay in your head for-freakin'-ever, the kind you need hear only twice to memorize — and make no mistake, chances are that you've heard most of the selections on Greatest Hits Vol. I & II many more times than twice. Or, as he puts it himself on the compilation's first selection, "Son, can you play me a memory?/I'm not really sure how it goes/But its sad and its sweet and I knew it complete/When I wore a younger man's clothes.'"

Dig into those memories, though, and you discover something else about Joel that is equally difficult to get around: as golden as his ear is for tunes, it's pretty tin when it comes to words. Lots of lyricists write duff lines — just ask Bob "Can you cook or sew, make flowers grow?" Dylan. But few big-time songwriters' major works have gone clunk the way Joel's could. "Piano Man" itself moves from the felt grace of the above-quoted verse to the awkward would-be poeticism of "Paul is a real-estate novelist" (is he a dual careerist or are his novels about real estate?) and the what-can-you-really-say bravura of "They're sharing a drink they call loneliness/But it's better than drinking alone." Not really, Bill.

As anyone who's looked at a New York Times Bestseller list is aware, Americans tend not to put a premium on verbal precision: they like stories they can sink into. (Lists, too — though "We Didn't Start the Fire" wasn't issued until four years after GH I & II came out.) But pop works differently than the written word: it has to sing (in the metaphorical as well as literal sense) to be effective, and despite his homely vocal tone, Joel's best does just that. GH I & II is full of stuff that stays in your head because it deserves to. The man was born to write hits, and distilling his catalog down to them is the optimum way to experience his career arc.

Which is to say that GH I & II is the album Joel was born to make. It's got conceptual integrity in a micro as well as a macro sense: "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" followed by "New York State of Mind" boils not only 1976's Turnstiles down to its essence but an entire area of Joel's personal cosmos, where "Piano Man" fits as well. Though his angry-young-man phase produced just as much schlock as when he gunned for Broadway (see, um, "Angry Young Man"), when he was on a roll he fused the two with surprising precision: "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," "Only the Good Die Young," "Big Shot" and "My Life" more than make up for the gaucheness of "Don't Ask Me Why" and "She's Always a Woman." (The latter rewrites Dylan's "Just Like a Woman" so baldly it deserves some kind of prize.) And his schlock could be sublime. Just for fun, try to hear "Just the Way You Are" with fresh ears sometime. It became an instant standard for a reason. And if that doesn't work, just remember Joel singing it to Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street. See? Undeniable.

Joel was never much of a rocker; there's something chumpy about the guitar-driven stuff here, especially from 1980's Glass Houses, Joel's fake new wave album (everybody made one back then, from Linda Ronstadt to Yes). But even there he could deliver, particularly on "Pressure," which might be Joel's woolliest lyric ever: "All your life is Channel 13/Sesame Street/What does it mean?" (If only he'd sung this one to Oscar as well!) Joel did better with the pre-Beatles pastichery of 1983's An Innocent Man. GH I & II — and Joel's career — peaks with that album's "The Longest Time," In a way, it's the most daring thing Joel ever attempted: he overdubs himself into an a cappella doo wop group, and his homely voice never sounded lovelier than on the opening lines: "If you said goodbye to me tonight/There would still be music left to write." Maybe not pop music — Joel said goodbye to that at the end of the '80s. But his brand of it endures, and GH I & II is the optimum example of why.