Piano Man<\/i> was far from being a subpar effort from a young and upcoming Billy Joel, but in a change from the norm in the music industry, the albums following his true debut declined in quality. Streetlife Serenade<\/i> represents the lowest point in Joel\u2019s career until the vacuous emptiness of The Bridge. <\/p>\n
Three albums in, Joel sounds very very tired. Given the fact that he would reject the California scene for his next work, one can only assume that he was already fed up with things by 1974. With the exception of a few tracks, this album refuses to live up to any standards fans have of Billy Joel.<\/p>\n
<\/i><\/p>\n
The only true hit off this record was \u201cThe Entertainer,\u201d a jaunty little numbers that draws from a number of different sources, including bluegrass. Lyrically, I\u2019ve always found this track to be fascinating, because the man just tears the industry a new hole. Keep in mind this is only a year after the wide-eyed innocence of \u201cPiano Man.\u201d Joel has never been afraid to express cynicism regarding a variety of issues, and it\u2019s no different here.<\/p>\n
The clear-cut second best number, \u201cLos Angelenos,\u201d captures Joel in a rocking mood expressing his general disdain for Hollywood. The live version of this track on My Lives<\/i> is the definitive version, infusing more energy than the studio recording, but it is still a decent track in its original conception. <\/p>\n
Problem is, it\u2019s tough finding positives for everything else. There are two instrumentals, \u201cRoot Beer Bag\u201d and \u201cThe Mexican Connection.\u201d The former makes an effort to capture a honky tonk vibe, but fails to keep the interest. The latter is conceived in an entire different matter, playing out as Joel\u2019s attempt to craft a wide-ranging epic number. Thing is, he already did it better with \u201cThe Ballad Of Billy The Kid\u201d an album earlier.<\/p>\n
To be honest, there\u2019s not much more I really want to say about Streetlife Serenade<\/i>. It inspired a very low amount of emotion, which is something one can almost always count on with a Billy Joel album.\u00a0 Instead, a general feeling of malaise permeates the music. The stories are tired, the characters uninteresting. Things would indeed get better with Turnstiles<\/i>, but not much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":28674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5760],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-40161","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-billy-joel","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40161"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40161"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}