It has been a mere nine months since Willie Nelson’s last album My Way. That means it’s time for some new music from the Red Headed Stranger. The country stalwart released his latest record Ride Me Back Home on June 21. As with many of Nelson’s albums, it includes a mix of covers and original material. Among the covers is Nelson’s take on Billy Joel’s wedding-band staple “Just the Way You Are.” Continue reading »
Underneath Mac DeMarco‘s silly grin and hipster getup is a genuine troubadour who has more to do with classic-sounding songwriters like Paul McCartney, Elton John, and more recently Tobias Jesso Jr. The best proof is last year’s “Another One,” in which DeMarco does a better ’70s John Lennon than John Lennon often did during his solo career. Continue reading »
Let me state, for the record, that I am a Billy Joel fanatic. I have seen “The Piano Man” in concert more times than I have fingers to count. I have purchased every song that he has ever recorded – including his stuff with The Echoes and The Hassles. Heck, I almost named my first daughter “Alexa”, because that’s Joel’s daughter’s name (my wife put a stop to that however).
Needless to say, I am very protective and picky when it comes to Joel covers. So when I heard that some hip-hop artist from Pittsburgh – Mac Miller – covered my second favorite Joel song, “Vienna”, I immediately assumed I would hate it. And I was right.
But then I listened to it again. And again. And again. Continue reading »
They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!
As of today, Billy Joel is eligible for Social Security. So, now that his money woes are assuredly a thing of the past, let’s get to celebrating his 65th birthday in the accomplished style he really and truly deserves.
Continue reading »
Download This scours the web’s dark corners for cool cover freebies. View past installments.
Billy Joel spent much of the ’80s looking to court music lovers with albums that sounded either retro (An Innocent Man) or ultra-pop (The Bridge, which features a collaboration with Cyndi Lauper). For one glorious record, though, Joel broke from his “piano man” mold. He got angry. He got punk. Continue reading »
The first post of the month always features covers of every track on a famous album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!
Despite the fact that he had already released songs like “Piano Man,” “New York State of Mind” and “The Entertainer,” it took Billy Joel until his fifth album to hit the big time. After The Stranger hit in 1977 though, weddings were never the same again.
One of the all-time great rock stutters gets an appropriately full-volume delivery by some Seattle indie vets. [Buy]
Lowtide’s MySpace page describes them as “the musical equivalent of a computer virus,” which is pretty accurate. They didn’t seem to bother learning the real words here, so it’s viral in every sense of the word: unexpected, annoying, and infectious. [Buy]
Billy Joel is as sick of this dreck as you are. “I feel hypocritical [playing this song],” he told the New York Times a few years ago. “I divorced the woman I wrote it for.” Perhaps he should revert to the less schmaltzy version he sang for Oscar the Grouch in the ‘70s. Or perhaps he should check out with swinging salsa version. [Buy]
Any Billy Joel cover that doesn’t employ a lick of piano deserves props, particularly if it’s substituted with a double-acoustic guitar jam. [Buy]
Billy Joel has listed “Vienna” as one of his two personal favorites (the other being “Summer, Highland Falls”). It’s certainly among his most personal, detailing the time while on a trip to see his estranged Austria-dwelling father he saw a 90-year old woman sweeping the street and realized how much America abandons the elderly. “I thought ‘This is a terrific idea – that old people are useful -and that means I don’t have to worry so much about getting old because I can still have a use in this world in my old age,’” he said years later. “I thought ‘Vienna waits for you…’” [Buy]
Insert joke about Billy Joel being old here… [Buy]
A song that puts the “z” in “cheeze,” “She’s Always a Woman” gets a surprisingly sensitive treatment from these banjo-and-mandolin folkies. And listening to that voice, you’ll want to be the woman he’s singing about. [Buy]
Last November one website sponsored a Billy Joel beat-making contest where would-be DJs could only use sounds from the original tapes of this and “Stiletto.” Most are exactly as terrible as you might expect, but Kool T took a few hooks from “Get It Right” and created something almost unrecognizable. It’s technically a remix I suppose, but you find me a decent cover of this song and we’ll talk. [Buy]
The Stranger ends with this quiet gospel-tinged number, but these Philly soul sensations blew it wide open in a 1978 single that went to #65 on the R&B charts. [Buy]