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Billy Joel

Billy Joel

Style marker

Syncopated 3-note rhythm

Several Billy Joel songs from the mid-'70s contain a similar rhythmic pattern: he sings a dense sequence of sixteenth or eighth notes, with a note onset on all subdivisions but the first in each group of four.

Transcript of a line from Billy Joel's 1976 song Angry Young Man.
Angry Young Man (1976)
Transcript of a line from Billy Joel's 1977 song Anthony's Song (Movin' Out).
Anthony's Song (Movin' Out) (1977)
Transcript of a line from Billy Joel's 1977 song Scenes From An Italian Restaurant.
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant (1977)
From early on, I felt Beethoven. I still think he is the greatest composer who ever lived.

— Billy Joel, interview in Far Out Magazine (2025)

Sonantina in F Major (1807)Ludwig von Beethoven
Transcript of a line from Ludwig von Beethoven's 1807 song Sonantina in F Major.
Anthony's Song (Movin' Out) (1977)Billy Joel
Transcript of a line from Billy Joel's 1977 song Anthony's Song (Movin' Out).

The sequence [that opens the chorus of Movin' Out] is heard untransposed [...] in the F-major Sonatina ascribed by Thayer to Beethoven's Bonn period (first movement, mm. 35-38).

— Walter Everett, 2000. "The Learned vs. The Vernacular in the Songs of Billy Joel". Contemporary Music Review, 18(4).

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