American singer, songwriter, and pianist (born 1949)

Claude says:Billy Joel's blue-collar piano rock—that Long Island swagger and working-class storytelling—surfaces in your collection as occasional visits to the essentials, a handful of spins that touch down on his biggest narrative songs and that one Vienna cover that shouldn't work but does. You're not a devotee, but you respect the craft: a guy who made arena-sized emotion feel lived-in rather than manufactured.