Billy Joel: America’s Piano Man (Tempo: A Rowman & Littlefield Music Series on Rock, Pop, and Culture)

Amazon.com Price: $30.98 (as of 10/11/2019 08:09 PST- Details)

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Description

Despite his tremendous success, Billy Joel’s gifts as a composer and commentator on American life are long past due for a thorough investigation. In Billy Joel: The united states’s Piano Man, music historian Joshua S. Duchan looks on the career and music of this remarkable singer-songwriter, exploring the original ways Joel channels and transforms the cultural life of a changing The united states over four decades into bestselling song after song and album after album.

Billy Joel has not at all times enjoyed the acclaim of music critics, who have characterized his music as inauthentic and lacking a uniqueness of style. Duchan corrects this misunderstanding by exploring the depth and degree to which Joel’s songs engage with social, cultural, political, and economic issues. Organized by major themes and including original interviews with Joel himself, Duchan’s book delves into Joel’s endeavors as a musician, lyricist, and commentator on questions of geography and regionalism, politics, working- and middle-class culture, human relationships, and the history of music itself. Duchan draws on key songs from Joel’s career to explore every theme, from his folk-like lament for Long Island’s changing industry and way of life in “The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” to his emotional ode to Vietnam veterans in “Goodnight Saigon.”

Original interviews with Billy Joel blend with Duchan’s engaging analysis to offer readers of all backgrounds and ages a new take a look at these unforgettable songs. Music lovers and historians of both the educational and armchair variety will find this exploration of Joel’s work a rewarding adventure into The united states’s social, cultural, political, economic, and—above all—musical history.

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