William Martin Joel is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and composer. He has led a commercially successful career as a solo artist since the 1970s. His 1985 compilation album, Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2, is one of the best-selling albums in the US. Joel has been nominated for 23 Grammy Awards, winning five of them.
About Billy Joel in brief
William Martin Joel is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and composer. He has led a commercially successful career as a solo artist since the 1970s. His 1985 compilation album, Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2, is one of the best-selling albums in the US. Joel has been nominated for 23 Grammy Awards, winning five of them, including Album of the Year for 52nd Street. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2013, Joel received the Kennedy Center Honors, for influencing American culture through the arts. Since 2015, he has been married to Alexis Brinkley, and has three daughters: Alexa Ray, Katie Lee, and Small, as well as a son, Joel Jr. He currently performs at Madison Square Garden in New York City and the Kennedy Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as part of his ongoing River of Dreams tour. He is also known for his work as a voiceover artist for films, including Easy Money, Ruthless People, and Honeymoon in Vegas. His music has been featured on the soundtrack to the film Oliver & Company, and he has written several songs for the Disney animated film Oliver and Company, including “Only the Good Die Young” and “Uptown Girl” He has released 12 studio albums from 1971 to 1993 as wellAs one studio album in 2001, Fantasies and Delusions, a 2001 album featuring classical compositions composed by Joel and performed by British-Korean pianist Richard Hyung-ki Joo.
Joel was born in 1949 in the Bronx, New York, and grew up on Long Island, both places that influenced his music. He dropped out of high school to pursue a musical career, before signing a record deal with Family Productions and kicking off a solo career in 1971 with his first release, Cold Spring Harbor. Joel released his second album, Piano Man, in 1973. His third album, The Stranger, in 1977, was his critical and commercial breakthrough album, selling over 10 million copies. Joel produced 33 Top 40 hits in the U.S. across the 20 years of his solo career, all of which he wrote himself, and three of which managed to peak at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts. In 1987, he became the first artists to hold a rock and roll tour in the Soviet Union following the country’s ban on country music. Despite retiring from writing and releasing pop music following the release of River of dreams, he continues to tour across the globe. Joel is married to Alexa Ray and has a daughter, Alexa Ray Brinksley, with whom he has three children, including daughter Alexa Ray Joel, and son Joel Jr., who has two children of his own. He also has two step-daughters, Alexis Ray and Katie Lee. He lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife of 20 years, and a daughter of 10 years, Alexia Ray Joel. His son Joel J. Joel, Jr. is also a musician.
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