It's no secret that I am an enormous Billy Joel fan. Perhaps more than any other artist, he shaped the way I hear music (this is a result less of being raised on Long Island and more of being subjected as a child to my parents' preferences, where the car's tape cassette collection ranged from Frank Sinatra to...Billy Joel. I think my parents may have been the only baby boomers who never owned a Bob Dylan or Rolling Stones record). In my view, he's a significantly more talented song writer than Bruce Springstein (a glorified bar musician with political aspirations) and his craftsmanship is closely related to the rightly revered Elvis Costello. In particular, I've always been impressed with Billy Joel's more socially relevant compositions - songs like "Allen Town" which mythologize the plight of steel workers and "Goodnight Saigon," a song about Vietnam that's as poignant and terrifying to listen to as watching "Platoon" ("we came in spastic / like tameless horses / we left in plastic /as numbered corpses").
After releasing "The River of Dreams" in 1993, he's pretty much retired from writing new pop music, resigning himself to touring with old favorites and dabbling in classical piano. So it was with particular interest that I listened to Joel's new pop song, "Christmas Time in Fallujah." The song is written from the perspective of an American solider in (of course) Iraq. However, Joel does not sing it himself - rather, he gave the song to relative Long Island unknown, Cass Dillion.
Why didn't he record the song himself? According to Joel: "I thought someone with a young voice should be singing this, someone just starting out in life. Plus, you know, I'm 58 years old. My voice isn't the voice I was thinking of when I was writing; I was thinking of a soldier, someone of that age."
So how is it?
It's terrible. Actually, it's beyond terrible - it's embarrassing. It gives credence to every negative critique of Billy Joel you've ever heard (cheesy edgeless hack for fans of safe, soulless rock and roll music). Not only is it musically lazy and derivative, with a cliche Middle Eastern hook, it's lyrically pretentious:
It's evening in the desert
I'm tired and I'm cold
But I am just a soldier
I do what I am told
We came with the crusaders
To save the Holy Land
It's Christmas in Fallujah
And no one gives a damn
And I just got your letter
And this what I read
You said I'm fading from your memory
So I'm just as good as dead
We are the Armies of the Empire
We are the Legionnaries of Rome
It's Christmas in Fallujah
And we aien't never coming home
We came to bring these people Freedom
We came to fight the Infidel
There is no justice in the desrt
Because there is no God in Hell
They say Osama's in the Mountains
Deep in a cave near Pakistan
But there's a sea of blood in Baghdad
A sea of oil in the sand
Between the Tigris and Euphrates
Another day comes to an end
It's Christmas In Fallujah
Peace on Earth Goodwill to Men
It's Christmas In Fallujah
You can watch a performance here and judge for yourself:
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2 comments:
so this is what you were doing the other night when i heard this god-awful song come out of your computer. thank goodness.
i think maybe if he had picked someone who could
a. play the guitar well
b. sing without sounding like a british joey lawrence
c. sing without looking like joey lawrence (don't soldiers have crew cuts?)
the song would have been slightly less craptastic.
oh, who am i kidding? the melody is also awful. sounds a little like "Lithium" done by a 4th grader.
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