Billy Joel never liked his voice

Guest on the new series “How’s Life” by John Mayer on SiriusXM, Billy Joel he revealed that he had never loved his own voice. He confessed this when Mayer asked him if he ever wanted to change his way of singing or writing songs referring to his desire to imitate the falsetto of Sting in “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free”.

This is the guitarist’s question to Joel: “I know it’s strange to say ‘you wish you had more’ considering how many incredible songs you’ve written, but have you ever tried to think, ‘Ah, if I had just a couple more notes I’d be able to do it?'”.

This is the New York musician’s response to Mayer: “I’ve always wanted to sing like someone else, I’ve never liked my voice.

I would go into the studio to record, then go back to the control room and listen: ‘Oh God.’ I was always disappointed, no matter how good I thought the writing was, I never liked my voice. I always wanted to be like someone else.”

About ten years ago Billy Joel he told Consequence that as he got older he began to appreciate his voice more, even though he still didn’t consider himself a singer. In 2021 he spoke to USA Today about the difficulties he has on stage performing some of his songs. “For me, the real recordings are in the albums. We didn’t improvise in the middle of the songs, we didn’t change them much. We lowered some keys because of my age. I wish I had known that I would be doing this at my age. When I was doing them in my 20s and in my 30s, I was able to reach notes that I couldn’t imagine now. Now it’s hard to sing this stuff. By the end of the concert, my voice is gone and I can’t speak.”