Does our Generation have a Billy Joel?

It was 9 o’clock on a Sunday, in the upper mezzanine of Madison Square Garden, when I realized just how unique a superstar like Billy Joel really is. Twenty-five years after releasing his last album, Joel still returns every month to The Garden to a sold-out crowd of around 19,000 adoring fans. And although he is older, calmer, and possesses a deeper, aged voice, he is still armed with the piano chops of a pop virtuoso and a sweet, grateful temperament, which shone through even during his edgier tracks and when he spent a few minutes between songs complaining about millennials and selfies. As always, he blew the roof off The Garden just by sitting at the piano and belting some of his most beloved tracks. And it’s no secret that he has plenty of tracks to sing through; although he spent over two hours on stage, I have no doubt that he could’ve spent at least another two playing songs familiar to even casual fans.

Billy Joel’s appeal is indescribably universal, thanks in no small part to his brilliance as a pop songwriter. Most often, his music is fun and relatable, and it serves as the soundtrack to the previous generation’s childhood and adolescence. For example, “Uptown Girl” is pop-perfection of the 1980s, imbued with Joel’s classic combination of piano, soulful vocals, and doo-wop influence. His catalog is accessible and simply enjoyable across his entire career; he never strayed too far from the pop that he was loved for.

Don’t mistake the accessibility of his music as a lack of exploration, though. Joel’s love for jazz permeates through his live show, many of his hits, and was especially notable on one of his best received albums, 52nd Street from 1978. The addition of jazz into his pop formula was genius, resulting in tracks like “Zanzibar” and “Stiletto,” which brilliantly fed off Joel’s punchy vocals, but also his ear for riffs and humbleness that allowed him to put his spectacular band front and center. Although no two of Joel’s setlists at The Garden are the same, “Zanzibar” has somehow found a place with Joel’s pop classics and is played at almost every show. This undoubtedly speaks to his reverence to jazz as a major influence and adds to the freshness of his music, which, as a whole catalog, has aged extremely well.

While Joel’s music was wildly popular throughout all of America, his music especially resonated with the Northeast, and specifically New York, a fact that probably makes his Madison Square Garden residency possible. Few artists truly personify a place or resonate with the people of a region like Billy Joel. “New York State of Mind” is and will be an enduring classic, filled with a love for the city that only New Yorkers can know. Who else shares this status? Maybe Bruce Springsteen, whose all-American, Jersey Shore roots have launched his Springsteen on Broadway residency to success for almost a year now. However, Springsteen is far from being part of our generation. A more modern example of this would be Australia’s obsession with pop singer P!nk. For no special reason, low estimates say that P!nk sold over 650,000 tickets in Australia alone on her last tour, a number which amounts to almost 3% of Australia’s total population. She will undoubtedly have lasting success in Australia, but would she ever accept a prolonged residency in a country that she isn’t from? That is not for me to say.

Who from our generation, in 30 years, could remain a superstar of Billy Joel’s level? Whoever it is will probably have to be loved both personally and musically by a huge audience, or perhaps an audience heavily concentrated in a particular region. Will the music of pop singers like Lady Gaga or Ed Sheeran age or stay fresh in the coming decades? Will the biggest superstars like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift remain at the forefront? Could it be a rapper like Jay-Z, who has flaunted his New York identity throughout his career, or even Drake? Maybe a cult-classic? Or have streaming services like Spotify fractured the channels of how we listen to music so much that no artist will ever again be able to appeal to so many, as the artists of the ’60s and ’70s did? I urge everyone to think about this question, and start this conversation with your friends, because Billy Joel will not be at The Garden forever.