We have unlocked the deep, terrible heart of evil lurking within the so-called “Piano Man”
Given Twitter’s recent obsession with turning old poems into memes, it should be no surprise that someone dug up some old H.P. Lovecraft verse and found a way to have fun with it. What should be surprising is that notorious keyboard smasher Billy Joel has somehow found his way into the conversation. It all started last week when Twitter user @OurWorldcomic realized that Lovecraft’s haunting poem “Nemesis” has the exact same meter as Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” Once you realize it, it becomes one of those things you can’t un-hear.
It may seem like an odd pairing at first, but it kind of makes sense from a certain point of view. Lovecraft is famous for his weird and disturbing tales about monstrous god-creatures and people descending into the blackened pits of madness. Billy Joel writes about Long Island. Both are truly the masters of horror fiction.
Over at Birth Movies Death, they weren’t satisfied with simply imagining Joel crooning about “the dark universe yawning.” They wanted to actually hear what this would sound like. Of course, before they could even get someone in the studio, somebody else had already recorded their own version of the ’70s classic with its haunting new lyrics. Thank you, New York-based songwriter Julian Velard: