About

Piano Man is a song by American singer and songwriter Billy Joel. In addition to being Joel's signature song, it has been used in numerous video remixes where it is paired with tragic footage.

Origin

"Piano Man" was released on November 2nd, 1973.^[1] The song is a fictionalized retelling of Joel's experiences as a piano-lounge singer, and each verse of the song details a character in the "regular crowd" that attends his bar. The song peaked at #25 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and was a moderate hit at the time of release. However, the release of Joel's 1977 album The Stranger brought the song back into the public eye, and it became very popular. In 2016, the track was selected to be preserved by the Library of Congress in the National Recording Registry for its "cultural, historic, or artistic significance."

Spread

Online, the song is popularly used in remix videos showing tragic footage, often of a character or animal dying. One of the earliest popular videos to use the song in this way was a Vine video which showed a turtle getting run over by a car (shown below, left). Instagram user analuciver.v2, since deleted, used the song with footage of a frog jumping off a cliff. A repost of the video to YouTube gained over 192,000 views (shown below, right).

The popularity of the meme led to the creation of several popular compilation videos. The most popular, posted by AgentSPD on December 16th, 2017 gained over 1.8 million views (shown below, left). An upload by Kennith Kennithson two weeks later gained over 159,000 views (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References