I'm not even sure what I'm allowed to enjoy anymore without being terribly pedestrian and low-brow.

Can someone write me a list?

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WHOOSH.

(That's the sound of many clues flying south for the winter over my head, apparently.)

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That "full disclosure" out of the way, Joel has never, ever, at any point in his career, been a darling of the critics. In fact, they've pretty much torn him up throughout the entirety of his time in the industry. Don't you think the guy has earned the right to be pissed when some asshole critic "plays nice" during the interview and then rips him and his music to shreds? Or how about this for being "arrogant": Joel KNOWS he's not the most talented guy on the block. He has never, ever claimed to be. In fact, go see him in concert or read/watch an interview that isn't a total slam piece, and he'll tell you as much. Yes, the self-effacing banter might well be canned bullshit, but the point is he's not out there even remotely pretending that his music has, is, or ever will change the world. If anything, he seems pretty damn humble in televised and print interviews. If you spend your entire career hearing that you're a schlocky piece of shit, you'd probably be pissed too.

Now, the man is not without his faults. He has stolen wives of bandmates, cheated on Christie Brinkely with Elle MacPhereson, is an alcoholic, and kicked Liberty DeVito out of the band for asking for some financial help during a bad time (i.e. taken to cleaners during a divorce). So yeah, he's probably a womanizing bastard, but whatever. There are probably a LOT of other male musicians who are also womanizing bastards too. Is that enough to justify the critics response? Nope.

What pisses me off the most is that there are so many other musicians who deserve to be called out as charlatans, but it always comes back to Joel. Give me a fucking break. Miley Cyrus? Britney Spears anyone? How about we criticize "musicians" who can't sing without heavy engineering, who don't write the own stuff, and who probably couldn't play an instrument if they had a gun to their head. Even Joel's Brit counterpart Elton John deserves some flack. If you want to piss on Joel for being an asshole, isn't Elton a famous piece of work too? And what about songwriting? The man hasn't written one word of any song he's ever put out. Cool...so he's a good piano player. Whatever. Somehow he gets a free pass as a legend, when he's really only contributes half the effort to his success--and the lyrics to his songs sometimes don't even make sense!!!

So yes, I'm a fan. And yes, I take umbrage with people who suggest that liking Joel's music is some major personal character flaw (Ahem: MissLinda, et al.). It just seems to me like this has all been done before, and if critics really want to "impact" the music industry, they should try calling bullshit on about 90% of what passes as "music" these days. Do something original and that doesn't show obvious contempt that Joel can still sell out concert after concert. I guess critics aren't really as influential as they'd like to believe.

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