Life is confusing. Currently, we are living in a timeline that seems to be from Joker’s fever dream, a chaotic evil hell world that is set to die in about thirty years but nobody seems to care. When I think about anything at all that’s currently happening in the world, I get a small panic attacks resembling ministrokes. Things, as it were, are not great, Bob.
Thankfully, the universe has gifted me a cure to the disease of chaos, and the cure is Billy Joel’s Piano Man, the greatest song ever written.
Simplicity is Piano Man’s greatest strength. Go listen to some Neutral Milk Hotel, and you’ll find that Jeff Mangum sounds like Billy Joel trying to sound like Neil Young. But while Mangum’s music doesn’t functionally sound that much different from Joel’s, his lyrics are a cryptic puzzle box that need to be decoded to understand, only adding to the confusion of life.
I want a song that tells me in the very first line when it takes place (at nine o’clock on a Saturday), then tells me who is there (the regular crowd), and in both the title and chorus, tells me exactly who is narrating (The Piano Man). That’s the kind of simplicity that sets the stage for the rest of the song to pull me into its dark but easy world with a cast of kooky characters whom everyone could relate.
Let’s meet those crazy character kids.
The Piano Man: This is the guy who is playing piano. People want him to play songs because that’s his job. He narrates this song.
The Old Man: He’s the first person mentioned in the song. He has a fetish for alcoholic drinks, and he openly fucks his drink while asking The Piano Man to play the song he’s thinking of, which he can’t really explain, but he remembers hearing it when he murdered a young man and then wore his clothes. He’s a sociopath.
John, The Bartender: We all love The Bartender. He’s vaguely good looking and thinks that means he can act. Ten years from when this song takes place (on a Saturday at nine o’clock), he’ll look in the mirror, discover he isn’t young anymore and kill himself because he’ll realize his dreams are dead.
Paul, The Real Estate Novelist: Everybody thinks they can write, and Paul is no exception. The difference is Paul is fucking right. He writes a popular book series about the top real estate firm in Los Angeles, and he’s currently debating if he should option his series into a Ballers-esque HBO series… only about real estate instead of football, of course.
He’s secretly gay, which is tragic because he’s waiting until his parents die to come out of the closet. For now, he tells everyone he doesn’t have time to date. We should really be ashamed of ourselves as a society that we haven’t created an environment where Paul feels safe declaring who he is to the world.
Davy, The Sailor: While Davy won’t die in the line of duty, his body will waste away entirely because of radiation poisoning from too much time spent on a nuclear sub.
The Waitress: Oh God, she thinks she’s political because she watches Handmaid’s Tale. Like, don’t bring it up with her even if you’re a fan, too. She won’t shut up about it. Seriously.
The Businessman: Okay, this is the darkest character in this song. He took an edible before coming into the bar and now he’s ranting about The Wire at The Waitress, and they’re cross-talking about their favorite shows. The more the weed kicks in, the more he digs his feet that nobody will ever top The Wire in terms of cultural importance.
The Manager: He’s an asshole.
The Piano: This is The Piano Man’s significant other.
That’s a great cast of characters, but what makes Piano Man so special is how Joel weaves them into the song’s plot.
Boy, is this song’s plot good, and unlike some more pretentious art, it’s not complicated. Instead, the song focuses on a situation anyone can relate. These people are in a bar, and they hate being there. Nobody in the world really wants to be in a bar, yet many of us still find ourselves in bars for some inexplicable reason, usually with people we hate – just like in this song!
And the plot doesn’t get more complicated than that. When I’m trying to decompress, it’s nice to relax with a song that starts one place (being in a bar sucks) and ends in that same place. That’s a plot this guy can easily follow.
To make things even easier, the characters all want the same thing I want, which is for The Piano Man to sing a song. We are all in luck because we are listening to a song that The Piano Man is singing about The Piano Man singing a song in a shitty bar. What I want is happening as we are listening to the characters beg The Piano Man to sing so they can ignore that they’re in a fucking bar.
That is probably the best thing about the song. Joel is singing about the thing he is currently doing. Joel is singing about the thing I’m currently doing. Joel is singing a song that strikes right at my current situation as I’m listening to it.
Imagine if Billy Joel followed you around, narrating everything you are currently doing.
You get in a fight with your boss, and he’s singing about that. You strike your boss in the head with a paperweight, he’s singing about that. You drag your boss’ body out to your car and drive deep into the woods and bury him under the largest tree you can find, he’s singing about that.
How cool would that be? I’ll tell you – very cool. And this song is the closest any of us will ever get to Billy Joel narrating our lives because he narrates the act of listening to him sing this song.
No other song in existence is as completely on the nose and literal as Piano Man.
I defy anyone to nominate a song more surface level than this one. When you’re a stupid fucking idiot like me who needs everything spelled out for him in this confusing world, nothing beats my man Billy Joel singing about being Billy Joel singing to people who want to hear Billy Joel sing about being Billy Joel singing to people.
This is the greatest song ever written.