He Had to Be a Big Shot, Didn’t He? Billy Joel – The Hits
To be able to give a fair review of Billy Joel – The Hits, one should listen to the album at least four or five hundred times. Okay, I’m not exactly lying, just trying to justify playing Billy Joel – The Hits four or five hundred times. Does this mean I’m enjoying The Hits? Oh yeah!
When I was a teenager (and dinosaurs roamed the earth) I never quite got the concept of “Greatest Hits” albums (on vinyl, no less). After all, if you liked an artist or group didn’t you already have all of the releases? Of course, back then school attendance was optional (what’d’ya mean, “no, it wasn’t”?) and we had plenty of time on our hands to listen to all our albums over and over and over. As long as we had the strength to crank the victrola, we tortured our parents with wild music (like The Beatles and The Monkees).
Now that I’m all grown-up and work is optional (huh?), I’ve discovered good reasons for “Best of” collections. I’m not always in one place long enough to listen to every Bruce Springsteen, Weird Al, Randy Travis, Billy Joel, or Me First and the Gimme Gimmes album I own--“best of” gives me the opportunity to refresh my memories of their most popular songs (as well as my memories of what I was doing when they were popular). And then there are those artists whose only songs I know are their hits.
When Billy Joel was singing, “Who needs a house out in 
Hackensack? Is that all you get for your money?” I was living in one of Hackensack’s neighboring towns, and there was a lot of memorable things I was doing—full-time school, full-time mom, full-time job (I didn’t say I was doing them well, did I?). Joel sang about places I knew and gave voice to emotions I felt. Listening to his older songs is like a highlights reel of one’s life when the songs were popular.
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