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When I hear "Just the Way You Are," it never makes me think about Joel's broken marriage. It makes me think about all the perfectly scribed love letters and drunken e-mails I have written over the past twelve years, and about all the various women who recieved them. I think about how I told them they changed the way I thought about the universe, and that they made every other woman on earth unattractive, and that I would love them unconditionally even if we were never together. I hate that those letters still exist. But I don't hate them because what I said was false; I hate them because what I said was completely true. My convictions could not have been stronger when I wrote those words, and-for whatever reason-they still faded into nothingness. Three times I have been certain I could never love anyone else, and I was wrong every time. Those old love letters remind me of my emotional failure and my accidental lies, just as "Just the Way You Are" undoubtedly reminds Joel of his.
Perhaps this is why I can't see Billy Joel as cool. Perhaps it's becasue all he makes me see is me.

-Chuck Klosterman