In response to Billy Joel's "classical" cross-over album, Fantasies and Delusions:

It takes 10 years to become an overnight success. Billy Joel has, what, 9 years and 11 months to go? He's making a career change, lots of us have done that, but when you start over in a new field, you're starting over, and no amount of past success is going to cover that.

Yes, crossing over is hard, and successes are few. (Keith Jarrett didn't succeed, by the way; he plays classical like he's afraid he'll break it.) But the real arrogance is thinking that they've got a leg up on success. Every composer starts out by writing a pastiche of their idols. What matters is what they do when they go beyond that. Bartok started out imitating Liszt, and took us to a new universe. Shostakovich started out tinkering with the avant garde, imitated Berg (compare The Nose with Wozzeck), and ended up ripping our hearts out.

So it's just another pretty, pretentious pastiche. Billy Joel hasn't found his new voice yet, ho hum. And because it is lukewarm, the Lord will spit it out from his mouth.

If he's still at it in 10 years, he might get interesting.