Lately, I’ve been on a binge. Not of chocolate-covered espresso beans (though those were involved) but of music documentaries. You know, the kind that unwrap a legend’s life like a glittery, bruised onion: layer after emotional layer, until you’re left sniffling and singing along in your bathrobe. The latest installment in my viewing odyssey? Billy Joel. Part Two. The Piano Man. The Madman Behind the Baby Grand. The everyman with a Yamaha and a thousand emotions per song.

And so it goes, indeed.

Billy Joel’s life is like a rollercoaster designed by a bipolar architect: sky-highs, gut-dropping lows, and unexpected loops that throw your hair into knots. He was giddy in the spotlight, then spiraling in the shadows. In love, then scorched by it. Trusting, then betrayed. Writing mega-hits, then being accused of unoriginality. Which, excuse me, is like calling a Swiss Army knife “too versatile.”

At one point in the documentary, MTV beckons, and he says yes. Yes to being seen. Yes to weird camera angles. Yes to letting the new kids have a go at his legacy. And yet the critics still came: too pop, too theatrical, too… too much. Meanwhile, I was over here doing a soft-shoe in my living room, mouthing the words to “The Longest Time” like it was a personal anthem. Because wasn’t that the point of Billy Joel? He felt things, and wrote them down. He time-stamped his emotions. And if you didn’t like it? Well, he didn’t ask for your playlist password anyway.

Here’s what hit me hardest: the fact that his versatility, his ability to pivot from Bronx barroom ballads to classical piano to doo-wop harmonies, was seen by some as a creative weakness. As a psychologist and a chronic over-analyzer of human emotion (occupational hazard), I found myself yelling at my screen: “That’s not a flaw! That’s emotional agility!”

Billy didn’t fake it. He didn’t sell a “brand.” He sold his truth. And his truth was that, yes, he could be deeply melancholic one year and singing about Italian restaurants the next. Is that not exactly what life feels like? A mash-up of minor chords and major key modulations?


Which brings me to this: Why are all these music documentaries basically emotional war stories? Whether it’s Billy Joel, George Michael, Amy Winehouse, or even the Bee Gees (yes, I watched that one too), they all feature a section where the artist is torn down, rebranded, chewed up, and left to either reinvent or retreat.

Is that the formula now? Triumph. Trauma. Triumph Again (with bonus behind-the-scenes footage)? Probably. It’s compelling. It’s human. It’s… marketable?

So, note to self: when I finally make my documentary (working title: PsychologistMimi: Barking Dogs and Burnout), I’d better throw in a montage of emotional upheaval. Perhaps a scene where I question my life choices over a stale croissant and cold brew, then rally to deliver a keynote in leopard print pumps. The people demand narrative arcs, apparently.


Billy Joel didn’t just give us songs. He gave us snapshots of what it meant to be alive and flawed and feeling too much. And that’s why I like him. Not for the Billboard charts, but for the honesty. For the late-night lyrics scratched out in moments of madness and meaning.

So if someone ever tells you you’re too versatile, too emotional, too real go ahead and channel Billy. Put it in a song. Or a blog. Or a power ballad scream from your car in the Trader Joe’s parking lot.

As for me, I’ll be over here planning my own dramatic rise-fall-rise arc… with an espresso in hand and a Billy Joel song in my head.

And so it goes.