“As far as I’m concerned”: The album Billy Joel called his final statement
As an artist as significant and culturally impactful as Billy Joel, it’s natural for teams, execs, and labels to want to push everything he’s worth. While this isn’t new, and many longstanding acts have faced endless compilations and other projects to capitalise on their legacy, Joel has always valued intricacy over meaningless commodification.
Unfortunately, however, he also understands that that’s the nature of the business. Like many, Joel has experienced the push for profitisation, even when he has remained steadfast in his integrity. This is considerably unsurprising, though, as Joel has also always been a genuine lover of music, with too much respect for the art to even entertain the idea of doing something for a mere gimmick.
Beyond the sinister corners of the industry, perhaps this is also why Joel seems like one of the more holistic artists, having absorbed all elements of most of his beloved favourites to shape his own craft. This could also be why he takes the industry’s incessant desire to twist everything into a business exchange on the chin, instead focusing on what serves him best and ensuring his music is curated with deep love and care.
The fact that Joel actively avoids empty, meaningless music speaks volumes about his view on authenticity, particularly regarding output and its volume. However, there are some things he has even less control over, like almost anything released after his 2001 record Fantasies & Delusions. An instrumental record containing classical compositions, Fantasies was Joel’s personal magnum opus; a noteworthy return to everything he ever loved about making music, and a fitting farewell.
Not only this, but Joel also imagined Fantasies to be the material that earned him a spot among music teachers in schools, something to refer to that holds a lot more weight than songs like ‘Piano Man’ or ‘It’s Still Rock ‘N’ Roll To Me’ ever could. It’s something that he said the teacher could look at the student and say, “You want to play a Billy Joel piece? Here, take this book home.”
It might seem ambitious, but considering how the record saw him pulling out the stops with all his fascinations with classical acts like Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin, it’s easy to see why he would hope people would notice it and give it some love and attention. However, while he intended for this to provide a hard stop to his musical releases, others had a very distinctive idea of how to keep his legacy going.
“They’ll put out anything these days,” Joel told Billboard after discussing his early rock project, Attila. “I keep seeing these compilations, I don’t authorise these things,” he continued, expressing his gripe with Sony and “these little indie labels” that “find twigs and stems somewhere”. Reflecting on his real ending, he added: “As far as I’m concerned, the last album I put out was the piano pieces, Fantasies & Delusions, but they keep putting stuff out. ‘The Greatest’, ‘The Best’, ‘The Essential’, ‘The Ultimate’, ‘We Really Mean It This Time’, c’mon, people think I’m doing it. I ain’t doin’ it.”
If there’s anything that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, it’s the way companies and labels continue to rinse anything they can get their hands on for monetary gain, most of the time without his knowledge or approval. Not only does this potentially tarnish a dignified legacy, but it also dilutes his musical purpose, framing his position as one that seeks to push and push and push without allowing him the right to closure.
