“Shut up”: The artist Billy Joel thought butchered his song
Billy Joel is one of the most covered musicians in history. Ever since the tracks were released, it seems like everyone wants to try their hand at ‘Vienna’ or ‘Piano Man’ or any number of his other hits. Most of the time, the musician sees that as an honour, but what about when a cover is so bad it becomes insulting?
Maybe that’s just what you get for being an artist like Joel. He has a real man of the people energy about it, as his piano-based rock tunes have enough of a pop edge to make them universally beloved and the perfect balance between technicality and ease to make them accessible for up-and-comers or total beginners. In short, they’re crowdpleasing songs that work on every level, whether someone is very learning to play the piano or is playing the bigger venues in the world.
But who can resist their charm? Joel’s lyricism is so delightfully storytelling that it sweeps listeners up and sucks them into whatever world, emotion or scene he’s speaking of. It’s something to aspire towards as generations of new musicians look to him for inspiration.
Between his musical influence and the mass of covers that have been done of his songs, Joel has to see the imitation as a form of flattery. Even on the most basic level, he is grateful for the love and effort shown towards his work. “I hear my stuff in elevators and I think somebody actually went to the trouble of putting together this really trite arrangement between jingle sessions,” he said, “I get a kick out of it, it means the music has a life of its own.”
So while usually receptive towards covers of his work, whether they be a jingle or a fully arranged and sung take on an old track, there was one version that he thought was so painfully bad, he couldn’t find the will to be kind about it.
“Helen Reddy once cut something of mine, a song called ‘You’re My Home,’ which wasn’t great,” he said. The singer and actor started in the business as a kid, and ever since, Reddy lingered around as a fringe showbiz figure often found on talk shows, in Broadway plays or popping up as a guest star in various films and TV shows. She could sing, there was no denying that, but when it came to this cover of Joel’s 1975 track, she couldn’t pull it off.
It was so bad that Joel couldn’t help himself but make fun of it. “I did it at a gig once and introduced it sayin,’ ‘This is a song of mine Helen Reddy cut… to pieces’”, he joked. But the little jab nearly got him into big trouple as he continued, “Turns out her husband or her manager was in the audience, and they were talkin’ about suing me.”
Thankfully it was never escalated. There was never a showdown between the two singers, but instead, there was a sort of humbling olive branch offered by Reddy’s embarrassed hand. Still, Joel couldn’t help but take a swipe as he recalled, “Helen got in touch and said she was never recording one of my songs again, and I was like, ‘D’you promise?’”
Upon reflection, Joel could’ve been kinder. As he told the story to Uncut magazine in 1998, he seemed to realise the cruelty of his ways as he admitted it was a “kind of a smart-ass reply,” adding, “Maybe I shoulda just shut up.” The recounting of the tale led to a brief moment of personal reckoning as Joel gave himself a talking-to. “I gotta let these things go,” he said, “it shouldn’t bother me.”
Surely, what Reddy did to the track could be no worse than some of the elevator jingle takes on ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire” or the atrocious rewrites that crop up year after year with modernised lyrics that get more cringe-inducing with each line. Perhaps after hearing Green Day’s 2023 take on the track, Reddy’s poor cover has been usurped as the worst one out there.
