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[LuvOrlando]

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[LuvOrlando]

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[BunsenH]

Those type of artists don't get much publicity anymore. You need to dig harder to find them. These folks come to mind:

Marc Cohn
John Hiatt
Patty Larkin
Dar Williams
Lyle Lovett

Enjoy your exploration!

 

[LuvOrlando]

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[bicker]

I used to be a big Billy Joel fan, back in the 1970s, but rarely if ever listen to his music any more. Like you, I was initially very resistent to listening to modern music, with just minor exceptions. The older music clearly didn't speak to me anymore, but I didn't make the effort to keep up with modern music. And the brief exposures I had to some modern music (electropop, hip-hop, rap, etc.) really turned me off.

My wife, a big music lover, kept on me, though, and in the last year I've found a lot of modern music, that I really enjoy. The world has moved on, and music moves on too, I feel. What I've realized is that a lot of the newer music not only has superior production qualities but also offers a viscerally stronger experience. Overall, I feel modern music is superior to what has come before, on several levels. Perhaps it is because there is a lot more competition, these days, and so that inspires a lot more excellence from the music industry, in terms of writing, performance, and production.

So my objective has been, as a Billy Joel fan from the 1970s, to find modern artists who appeal to me.

Generally, I feel that Pandora is a good resource for finding music recommendations -- they gather information about what music you do like, and use that to project, based on technical characteristics of the music, itself, what other songs and artists you'd like. However, for some reason, their recommendations related to Billy Joel are all old songs. It seems that they figure that if you like old music, that that is all you'll like. I know that, at least for me, that is absolutely wrong -- there is something great about not only resonating with a song or album, but resonating also with today's music scene. Looking forward to the release of some current artist's album, today, is that same feeling we had when waiting for the release of a new album when we were younger.


My wife recommends we check out Plain White T's. Just listening to their most popular download off Zune Marketplace, "Hey There Delilah" (because I had never heard of them myself, before I asked my wife for a recommendation for you), I have to warn you not to expect to hear a Billy Joel revival sound, though. I think my wife puts them forward as the logical progression of Billy Joel into the context of today's music -- perhaps what Billy Joel would have created had he been born thirty years later.

Marc Cohn, mentioned by BunsenH above, is another decent recommendation. (That's from me, not my wife.) However, I think Marc Cohn is just a bit too much "The Entertainer", "Piano Man", and "The Stranger", and not enough "Captain Jack", "Say Goodbye to Hollywood", "Only the Good Die Young", "Pressure", and "Tell Her About It". Marc Cohn represents only one part of Billy Joel (the solitary balladeer), IMHO.

BunsenH also mentioned John Hiatt. I'm not as enthusiastic about that recommendation, because Hiatt is even more so just a reflection of one specific part of Billy Joel (the bluesy part, this time), and his music seems to me very much a throw-back, rather than a natural progression of that music into today. Besides, John Hiatt is pretty far into his career... and since my personal objective is to check out today's artists that Billy Joel fans, like myself, would enjoy, John Hiatt isn't really on my scanner.

BunsenH also recommended Patty Larkin. Though she's also well into her career, her music is more modern, IMHO, than John Hiatt and even Marc Cohn. However, I think some old-time Billy Joel fans might find Larkin's music a bit too "wierd" (as a fan of the Talking Heads in the 1980s, I don't, at least to some extent), or a bit too folk-rock-y (as a fan of Sheryl Crow in the 1990s, I don't). However, it seems that Larkin is aiming toward even more "weird" (especially her most recent album), so she's not going to end up on my playlist for long, I suspect.

BunsenH also recommended Dar Williams, who is another folk-rock artist. With some minor exceptions (such as her cover of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb), I feel that her music is, like John Hiatt's, too much of a throw-back (perhaps even to a time before Billy Joel).

I might as well comment on Lyle Lovett as well. Again, like John Hiatt, I think Lovett speaks to only one part of Billy Joel, and is too much of a throw-back for my tastes.

So do folks have more recommendations for "today's" Billy Joel's, along the lines of (a rockier) Marc Cohn or the Plain White T's (and not-so-much along the lines of John Hiatt or Dar Williams or Lyle Lovett )?

 

[BunsenH]

bicker,
Thanks for your detailed response. I don't disagree with any of your comments. My "off the cuff" list keyed on 'storytellers' that the OP may not be aware of rather than a new BJ. I will brainstorm a bit more and toss out some more suggestions. At the least, you and I will have some listenin' to do. I will check ou the Plain White Ts.

 

[JESW]

Harry Chapin was always the story teller in his songs. If you haven't already you may want to check out some of his music. Sadly, he died in a car crash in 1981..

Jill

 

[bicker]

One thing I just checked out was Billy Joel's "Top Listeners" on the Zune social -- looking to see what they're also listening to. Unfortunately, as you may well imagine, most of them are only listening to old music. Only one is listening to modern music: Solonova is listening to T-Pain, Akon, Gwen Stefani, Pink, Chris Brown, Kanye West, Jordan Sparks, DAUGHTRY, and Rihanna.

Can someone check the top listeners for Billy Joel on iTunes? I suspect they have a similar feature whereby you can see what those folks listen to most...