Longtime readers of the Daily Vault know that I have never given a damn what anyone else thinks about an album. That said, when we decided to do a William Joel retrospective, I dug myself out from under a pile of work and grabbed The Bridge<\/i>, an album that has been ignored, dismissed and vilified by most self-anointed rock cognoscenti (kind of like Mr. Joel himself. But I digress; that’s a rant for another time).<\/p>\n
Another music Web site that shall remain nameless has this to say about The Bridge<\/i>: \u201cYou could say that it’s eclectic, but it’s scattershot, because it’s just Joel showing off his musical skills.\u201d My response to that is: So what?<\/i> Not every album has to be a weighty musical tome full of overwhelming meaning and portent. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes music is just music. And The Bridge<\/i> is a pretty fine piece of work viewed in those lights.<\/p>\n
I will cheerfully admit The Bridge <\/i>is Joel playing around, stretching his limits, experimenting a bit. He checks in as Billy Joel, Rock Guitarist on \u201cA Matter Of Trust\u201d and comes up with a hook big enough to troll for sperm whales. He duets with Ray Charles on \u201cBaby Grand\u201d and it’s a masterpiece, showing off Joel’s vocal stylings and piano playing. <\/p>\n
Even the normally yodeling Cyndi Lauper checks in on \u201cCode of Silence\u201d and manages to sound, if not exemplary, at least acceptable. Add in the wordplay of \u201cRunning On Ice\u201d and the wide-screen big band song of \u201cBig Man On Mulberry Street\u201d and this is just a fun CD. Joel is relaxed, playing it easy, playing around, and it shows. It’s hard not to enjoy this CD, the satisfaction is so infectious. <\/p>\n
Some people will try to turn this into a political statement or compare it unfavorably to the Angry Young Man earlier in Joel’s career. I’d rather just enjoy it. The Bridge<\/i> is a testament to Joel the songwriter and it’s a heck of a lot of fun. Don’t overlook it and don’t buy the critical hype.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":28685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5760],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-40175","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-billy-joel","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40175","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40175"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40175"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}