R. Kelly Trial Aftermath: Jurors Believe Kelly Was on Sex Tape

Following last Friday's acquittal of R. Kelly, several jury members spoke to the media to discuss why they dismissed charges against the R&B singer. Contrary to the defense's efforts that Kelly was not in the video because of the missing mole, the jury unanimously agreed that Kelly did in fact star in the sex tape at the center of the trial. However, they didn't believe that the girl in the video was that then-underage girl that prompted child pornography charges against Kelly. The fact that the girl's family was split over whether that was the girl or not, and that the girl herself denied it was her, helped fuel the jury's decision to acquit. The jurors also dismissed claims that they hurried to a verdict because they didn't want to spend Father's Day deliberating. However, the outcome of the trial would have been much different had the three alternate jurors stepped in, as was almost the case. The three alternates believed it was Kelly and the then-underage girl on the sex tape and would have endorsed a guilty verdict.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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