Artist

Billy Joel

American singer‐songwriter and pianist

New York City, United States • b. 1949

Billy Joel is a musician from New York City, United States, active since 1949. Their discography on Gatefold includes 24 records.

Start your shelf →Open in app

Albums tracked

1,106

In collections

1949

Since

Biography

William Martin Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. He is known by the nickname “Piano Man”, derived from his 1973 song of the same name, and has maintained a career as a solo artist since the 1970s. Between 1971 and 1993 he released 12 studio albums in the pop and rock genres, followed by a studio album of classical compositions in 2001. With global record sales exceeding 160 million, he is among the best-selling

The Arc of Billy Joel

The pivots — what forced Billy Joel to reinvent.

The Family Productions Escape
After the mastering disaster of his solo debut and a stint in a mental health facility, Joel fled to the West Coast to play the Executive Room on Wilshire Boulevard as Bill Martin. This period of professional exile forced him to lean into the observational songwriting that defined Piano Man, turning the regulars at a dead-end bar into high drama. Columbia Records eventually bought out his bad contract, but that sense of being an outsider in Hollywood never quite left his lyrics. It provided the cynical edge that balanced out the melodic sweetness of his early seventies output.
The Phil Ramone Partnership
Everything changed when Joel refused to let a producer replace his touring band for The Stranger in 1977. Phil Ramone was the first guy behind the board to realize that the chemistry between Joel and his live rhythm section was the key to the sound. They tracked the hits with a loose, aggressive energy that session pros couldn't replicate, resulting in a run of multi-platinum records that defined the FM dial. This era saw him master the 'New York' sound—tough, sophisticated, and deeply rooted in the city's frantic pace.
The Genre-Hopping Pivot
Following a motorcycle accident and the massive success of Glass Houses, Joel spent the early eighties intentionally tearing down his image. He jumped from the high-concept storytelling of The Nylon Curtain to the pure 1950s R&B worship of An Innocent Man, proving he was a chameleon of American radio history. He was obsessed with the mechanics of the song, treating each record like a workshop in a different era of pop. This culminated in his 1987 tour of the Soviet Union, a high-stakes logistical nightmare that signaled the end of his peak imperial phase.

Influences

The Beatles — Joel famously cited seeing them on Ed Sullivan as the moment he knew he wouldn't be a classical pianist. You hear the McCartney melodicism all over 'The Stranger' and the Lennon-esque grit in his vocal delivery on 'Sometimes a Fantasy.' The White Album's genre-hopping became the blueprint for his entire career.
Ray Charles — He named his daughter Alexa Ray after the man and frequently imitated Charles's vocal phrasing in live sets. The soulful, gospel-tinged piano work on tracks like 'New York State of Mind' is a direct lift from the Brother Ray playbook. It’s the blues foundation underneath the Long Island suburbia.
Otis Redding — Joel specifically wrote 'Goodnight Saigon' and several tracks on 'The Bridge' with Redding’s staccato vocal style in mind. You can hear it in the way he pushes his voice into a raspy, soul-shouting register during his more aggressive mid-tempo rockers. He was chasing that Stax Records heat in a pop context.
The Four Seasons — He’s gone on record saying 'Uptown Girl' was a direct tribute to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' vocal arrangements. The tight, high-register harmonies and the street-corner doo-wop aesthetic are woven into his DNA. It’s the sound of the tri-state area before the British Invasion changed the math.
Gershwin — Before he was a rock star, he was a student of the Great American Songbook, and Gershwin's influence shows up in the sophisticated chord voicings of 'Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel).' He treats the piano like an orchestra, not just a rhythm instrument. It gave him a harmonic vocabulary that most of his seventies peers simply didn't have.