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)
Connection
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).