Image Credit: George Napolitano/FilmMagic.com; FoxOn last night’s Access Hollywood, Billy Joel confirmed what Ryan Murphy hinted to us last April: That he was would gladly release his music to Fox’s runaway hit, Glee — and in fact, already has. “I said, ‘Yeah, go ahead, use my stuff,” said Joel. “I was in a chorus when I was in high school, why not?” Don’t, however, expect to see him dancing through the halls of McKinley High on your TV anytime soon. Joel’s more of a behind-the-scenes kind of guy: “I’m just not a big TV actor type of guy. I’m a piano player,” he said.
Joel and Gleeks have already proven to be a winning combination — his signature song “Piano Man” was performed on the show last season by guest star Neil Patrick Harris, who earned an Emmy over the weekend for his work on the series.
So what Billy Joel songs are you most excited to hear on Glee, PopWatchers? I, for one, am pretty fired up for a little “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”
For a network that is purposefully pitched to the lowest common denominator of teenagers, MTV has a pretty impressive history in a lot of different genres of TV shows. Musical programming, animation, sketch comedy, reality TV…well, okay, not so much the first three anymore. Still, any network that can support the blue-collar emotion of 16 & Pregnant alongside the trashy decadence of Jersey Shore deserves at least some kind of acclaim. But one thing has always proven elusive for MTV: good, solid, fictional programming. Example 1: the debut last night of Made: The Movie, which managed to combine every single teen comedy ever made into a cliché-bot cocktail of blandness.
