I thought 'ghetto crackhead' was the Hilfiger look anyway.

Here are the Billy Joel songs cleared for this week.

The Fast Songs (pick these)

Big Shot

For The Longest Time

I Go To Extremes

It's Still Rock N Roll To Me

Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)

My Life

Only the Good Die Young

Tell Her About It

The River of Dreams

Uptown Girl

We Didn't Start The Fire

The Ballads (do not pick these)

And So It Goes

Hey Girl

Honesty

Just The Way You Are

Leave A Tender Moment Alone

New York State of Mind

Piano Man

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant

She's Always A Woman

She's Got A Way

Vienna

Let's be honest. There are 10 contestants left and 11 possible ballads. They're all singing ballads, aren't they?

$100 says Closet-ton rapes Piano Man...

I wouldn't consider "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" a ballad, at least not the "Brenda and Eddie" part. But yeah, it will be all ballads except for maybe 1 or 2.

And that song is over 7 minutes long. Good luck cutting it down to 2.

(double post)

There is also always a chance that they take one of the fast songs (let's say My Life) and turn it into a funeral dirge with one of Jimmy's "arrangements".

Funny how they never go the other way and turn a slow song into an uptempo one...

Idol with this theme!

^Yes, I'm kind of with you on that.

I think that "We Didn't Start The Fire" is quite possibly the worst song ever vomited out onto the radio airwaves. That being said, if any of these idiots tries to tackle it, I'm thinking he/she should automatically be the next VFTW pick.

Nah, fuck that, too much to hope for. Moar balladz.

^ There is a local Karaoke bar (near the Campus of Lehigh University), and everytime I've been there, the same guy gets up and perfectly sings every word to, "We Didn't Start The Fire". And does it without looking at the screen. It's his crowning achievement in life. That and he also won a hot dog eating contest once.

There could be a breakout moment coming for someone who dares to sing that song while eating a hot dog.

^^Lehigh just beat Duke in the big tourny. I imagine they'll be doing wayyy more racaus shit than that this weekend

No inclusion of my favorite, 'You May Be Right'? Denied!

No walking through Bedford-Stuy alone for these goons, I guess.

I see a lot of the contestants saying "Yeah, aside from Piano Man, I'm not really familiar with these songs."

I see Heejun performing Just The Way You Are, regardless of what he posted on twitter.

^Remember that at this time last year, Casey Abrams said he was gonna "go bold." And what did he do? Your Song. So yeah, don't put too much hope into Heejun's twitter claim.

Heejun will probably sing NY State of Mind, like he did during the Vegas rounds.

Even though they released a list of the cleared songs, I was thinking up some some Joel tracks that would be VFWorthy.

1. The Downeaster Alexa (Stormfront)

2. An Innocent Man (An Innocent Man) High notes train wreck, would that be a pick for Deandre.

3. And so it goes (Stormfront) Is this slow enough for Heejun?

4. The Longest Time (An Innocent Man) A great DooWop for Joshua.

5. Pressure (Nylon Curtain) A great over production opportunity.

ETA: Oops. Forget #3. Substitute Lullaby (River of Dreams).

Those 'fast' songs are only fast by comparison to the American Idol dirge-fest. A 'fast' Billy Joel song is still mid-tempo boring suckage. If all the 'Idols' chose from the first list we would still be treated to life threatening ennui.

How about a Chuck Berry night? Or an AC/DC night? That would be entertaining whether the contestants were good, mediocre or utter trainwrecks.

I want every theme to fall under the rubric of "music Jennifer Lopez has never heard of..." They Might Be Giants, Elvis Costello, the Nuggets anthologies, Shonen Knife...

AND HAS ANYONE ON AI EVER DONE A SHIRELLES SONG?! WTF!

I'd pay to watch a Ramones night. Hell, I'd pay to watch Billy Joel sung in the style of The Ramones.

We'd probably get a ballad version of each Ramones hit.

^^I'll be having nightmares now.

Talk about being sedated!