Name ______Song 1______

Thoughts About the Lyrics / Thoughts About the Singing
Lyrics sound like something from a Hallmark card – very sappy and emotional, but in a cheesy way.
Lyrics tell stories about people at the bar where he’s playing piano. He seems to think that he’s better than the customers. / The lyrics are sung in a quiet way as he’s telling the stories of the people at the bar, but get louder and more forceful when the Piano Man chorus kicks in.
These are lyrics that are designed to be sung by large groups of people at parties or in concerts. Even though I don’t like the song, I can admit this part sounds great.
Thoughts About the Beat/Rhythm / Thoughts About the Music
Midtempo song. Never enough to make you bored, but not fast/dance style either. Considering the song is about a group of people who are down on their luck, it seems appropriate. / He is an amazing piano player, but you wouldn’t really know it from this song. He plays slow little pieces that are meant to sound like background music at a restaurant while the other musicians play the melody and most of the notes.

Thoughts about the whole song, written in paragraph form:

For many people, this is the ultimate Billy Joel song. But if you don’t like Billy Joel, this song is the ultimate reason to hate him. The lyrics are soooo sappy and trying soooo hard to make us feel sympathy for the characters he’s singing about that I roll my eyes. Trying too hard to do something good when you don’t have the talent for it is a hard thing to overcome. (“In here I’ll put quotes from the lyrics that prove my point, like I ask you guys to do.”) The problem I have here is that the cheesy lyrics are very catchy and get stuck in your head, especially the chorus of the song. Hearing 50,000 people sing it at the World Series last year was special, even for someone who dislikes the song. The way the song gets a little faster at the chorus, coming after the slower section of the song where he tells his stories is entirely appropriate, but also a little selfish. In each slow part of the song, he’s talking about other people and the song has less energy, but when he sings about himself (“Sing us a song, you’re the Piano Man, sing us a song tonight…”), suddenly the energy level goes up. It makes it seem like Billy Joel thinks he’s better than the people at the bar listening to him play. If I had to explain why I dislike this song so much, it’s the lyrics though. They’re trying so hard to make the listener have an emotional reaction and I don’t respond well to that. I have emotional reactions to things that are less obvious than what he’s trying here and I usually get repulsed when someone is begging for this kind of emotional response. Just let it happen on its own, dude. Stop being so thirsty.