If I could sing like that

The other day, Rachel asked me “if you could have anyone’s singing voice in the entire world, whose would you choose?”

I thought for all of about two seconds about which male voice I find most enjoyable to listen to, then immediately changed my thought process and said “Billy Joel.”

For some reason, I supposed that Rachel would ask why I chose Billy Joel. But she is far, far smarter than that. She knew.

I mean, were it not for his singing, how would a dorky-looking guy who looked like this on his first album cover:

And who hasn’t aged particularly well and now looks like this (dorky guy on the right, not dorky, slightly more flamboyant guy on the left):

Possibly ever date a woman who looks like this?

(I realize swimsuit fashions have changed since 1987, but you have to admit, Elle MacPherson still looks good, even if the French cut thing is a bit ridiculous looking, at least today. I was kind of constrained as to which photos to use, because, um, you know my wife and dad read this blog, and SI editors seem to think “translucent” and “bead necklace” and “not there at all” are all correct answers to the question “what swimsuit top should we photograph today?”)

As if that weren’t enough, after dating Elle MacPherson, Billy Joel went on to marry Christie Brinkley:

Seriously? Not only did the uber-hot, even at age 50-whatever-she-is-these-days Christie Brinkley marry a guy who looks like this:

She stayed with him for nearly a decade.

Does he live in some sort of alternate universe where there’s a maximum median hotness level for any given couple, so the better-looking the one is, the worse-looking the other needs to be? Because here on planet earth, as a general rule, the better looking the lady, the more handsome her husband is. (It’s a fine thing I’m such a good-looking sonofabitch, or Rachel would have had nothing to do with me.)

After Ms. Brinkley finally got fed up with looking at her homely husband and kicked his sorry butt out the door, do you think he crawled into a corner and wept over pictures of his former wife? Not on your life. Instead, he went out and found an attractive 23-year-old to marry. He was in his 50’s, and his daughter, nearly as old as the bride herself, was maid of honor.

Now in Katie Lee’s case, one might reasonably suppose that she hooked up with Billy Joel for his money or because it could help her career. But there’s no way such an explanation is plausible with the first two. After all, both already had well-established modeling careers. And given that his first wife’s brother embezzled the majority of Mr. Joel’s fortune before he met Elle or Christie, both probably also had more money than their beau.

So if it wasn’t his money, and it clearly wasn’t his looks, and given the fact that none of the relationships lasted it’s reasonable to suppose it wasn’t his personality, the only explanation for Billy Joel’s success with supermodels is his singing. Even though I don’t really care to listen to him, if I could sing like that, I guess I would.