Music Review: Billy Joel – She’s Got a Way: Love Songs

Billy Joel has experienced love in many forms, good and bad, and much of it in the public eye. Since he is a great musician and songwriter, he has taken all this experience and turned it into memorable music throughout the years between his first album in 1971 and his last release (so far) in 1993. She’s Got A Way: Love Songs presents 18 of those love songs.

Some of these songs are well known by everyone with a radio. These are the heartfelt ballads “She’s Got A Way” (presented here in a live version), “Just The Way You Are,” “She’s Always a Woman,” “Honesty,” and the slightly harder “Shameless” (also a hit for Garth Brooks).

Other songs will only be familiar to those fans who have collected Joel’s music through the years. These songs show a great deal of versatility, from the cool, doo-wop “This Night” to the beautiful instrumental “Nocturne” and the ’60s-sounding “Until the Night.” “This is the Time” is an anthem just made for singing along with at concerts or parties. The styles range from soft rock to classic rock and even country rock, but the emotion is always sincere and the lyrics honest.

This collection will please all of Billy Joel’s fans and will possibly convert some people who hear it who have not heard this much variety in Joel’s sound before. It’s been some years since Joel has put out any new music, and when he appears these days, he has acquired the persona of an “Elder Statesman of Rock.” But these songs take us back to an earlier persona, that of the working class hero with the heart of a romantic but a tendency to choose difficult women, as detailed in “Temptation” and “An Innocent Man.”

Certainly, each of these songs testifies to Joel’s ability to turn a phrase and create a story. This collection will prove to listeners old and new that Joel truly is one of American music’s best singer-songwriters. Nobody speaks to the heart better than Billy Joel.